Role of Partners

Although EUROGIA2020 does not exclude any consortia that meet the criteria for the quality label, experience has shown that the right combination of Large Enterprises, SMEs and research institutes often enhances the benefits of collaborative projects.

Large enterprises bring:

• their knowledge of business requirements on a world-wide level;
• a world-wide market base to commercialise the products resulting from collaborative RD&D projects;
• solidity of financial participation;
• a critical mass to support project management and administration; and,
• multidisciplinary expertise that will contribute, inter alia, to the training of young engineers and researchers.

They also avail to SMEs their world-wide contacts, providing those companies with new business opportunities as well as close and long-lasting relations with academia.

The SMEs participating in EUROGIA2020 projects bring:

• their highly focused know-how and capacity at developing enabling technologies;
• their local market knowledge; and,
• the necessary flexibility in terms of available resources and competences.

SMEs benefit from joint industry projects with Large Enterprises in terms of sharing technology know-how, business development, access to world-wide markets, employment and training. 
Because of their ability to adapt faster than larger companies to business changes, SMEs account for an important share of industrial growth.
It has been clearly demonstrated in past programmes that SMEs make important contributions in reaching common R&D objectives with the larger companies.

Research Institutes and Universities:

Although university/industry co-operation in research is well developed throughout Europe, it often remains local and regional or, at best, national.
Co-operation at the European level and beyond has been encouraged and works fine but rarely involves all of the supply chain actors. EUROGIA2020 trans-national RD&D projects offer significant opportunities to develop links between academia and industrial partners that do not have a tradition of working with universities.
Universities and research institutes are science providers for the industry and take charge of most fundamental research efforts. By working on challenging projects with the industry, universities and research institutes are able to attract and train excellent students and researchers for careers in both academia and industry.
A more extensive and systematic trans-European university/enterprise co-operation in R&D will guarantee education and training of European research teams and development of a much needed  critical mass of talented employees  and training opportunities.
The participation of trainee students and researchers in international projects will accelerate their access to first employment.