S3E project at a glance

S3E – Southern European Entrepreneurship Engine is a project, funded by the European Commission, focused on accelerating deep tech projects, start-ups, and SMEs that aim at providing solutions towards a more sustainable society and economy in line with Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

The S3E program is built around three tracks of carefully designed services tailored to support researchers, research teams, start-ups, scaleups and SMEs in advancing their technologies, products, processes, or services towards the market. Participants in the programs will be selected through open calls.

The S3E – Southern European Entrepreneurship Engine project mission is to develop an engine of growth that will contribute to improve the connectedness and efficiency of the entrepreneurship ecosystems in southern European countries. 

The S3E project is co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 European innovation ecosystems under the grant agreement ID: 101072135 (see here the Cordis fact sheet).

S3E consortium partners are:

● HiSeedTech - A not-for-profit association founded by private companies that came together with the purpose of enabling the creation of value from knowledge through technology entrepreneurship and open innovation.

● EPLO Institute for Sustainable Development – part of an international organization dedicated to mainstreaming the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the EU Green Deal, providing capacity building, policy work and educational programs.

● IDI (International Development Ireland) specialised in practical day-to-day implementation for Government agencies in economies which are growing and changing rapidly

● Australo Interinnov Marketing Lab Sl - is a marketing agency specializing in growth hacking for research and innovation. 

The S3E – Southern European Entrepreneurship Engine will focus on accelerating deep tech projects, start-ups, and SMEs that, by providing solutions towards a more sustainable society and economy, can impact social development and economic growth in these countries and contribute to the timely achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, in line with the EU Green Deal, the Recovery and Resilience Facility and the NextGenerationEU fund.

S3E will provide skills to researchers and technology transfer actors in science-based entrepreneurship and technology commercialization, supporting growth stage start-ups in business development and in procuring investment, and providing technology brokerage for corporates and scale-up stage start-ups and SMEs.

The program is built around three tracks of bespoke services tailored to start-ups’ varying levels of maturity (i.e., early, growth, and scaling stages):

• S3E Start: Aimed at research teams and technology transfer officers, S3E offers a hands-on training program to explore the potential social and economic impact of their scientific discoveries.

• S3E Charge: Aimed at growth start-ups, S3E provides mentoring and networking to develop an investment-ready business plan and facilitate access to non-dilutable and dilutable funding.

• S3E Reverse: Aimed at scaling start-ups and SMEs, S3E will set up an Open Innovation ecosystem to broker, connect, and match corporates to scaling start-ups through a challenge-solution duality.

•  S3E Start Open Call Text

•  S3E Charge Open Call Text

•  S3E Reverse Open Call Text