S3E Reverse Open Call #1 (Closed)

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.

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.

This document provides a full set of information useful for interested applicants who are willing to participate in S3E Track 3: S3E Reserve, that is directed towards scaling start-ups (or scale-ups), that are interested in gaining market traction through a pan-European brokerage program, that will connect them with corporates with certain challenges and problems, which they can work together to solve.

This document provides detailed information regarding the S3E Reserve program and its first Open Call for Proposals (also referred to as Open Call #1), as well as a general overview on the S3E project.

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.

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) specialises 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 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 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 (SDGs), 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: For research teams and technology transfer offices, S3E offers a hands-on training programme to hone their commercial skills and secure early funding for development.

● S3E Charge: For 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: For scaling start-ups / 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 Reverse is designed to help SMEs and scaling start-ups (or scale-ups), gain market traction through a pan-European brokerage program, that will connect them with corporate and public organisations, with specific challenges and problems, which they can work together to solve.

The program will start by inviting corporates and the public sector (Challenge Organisations) to unveil challenges they face, related to the SDGs that could be addressed through deep tech solutions.

The 1st call of our program will focus on challenges related to any of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals:

1. No Poverty (SDG 1): End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
   
2. Zero Hunger (SDG 2): End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
   
3. Good Health and Well-Being (SDG 3): Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
   
4. Quality Education (SDG 4): Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
   
5. Gender Equality (SDG 5): Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
   
6. Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6): Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
   
7. Affordable and Clean Energy (SDG 7): Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.
   
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth (SDG 8): Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all.
   
9. Industry Innovation and Infrastructure (SDG 9): Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.
   
10. Reduced Inequalities (SDG 10): Reduce inequality within and among countries.
    
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11): Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable
    
12. Responsible consumption and production (SDG 12): Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
    
13. Climate Action (SDG 13): Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
    
14. Life below water (SDG 14): Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development.
    
15. Life on land (SDG 15): Protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
    
16. Peace, justice and strong Institutions (SDG 16): Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
    
17. Partnership for the goals (SDG 17): Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development.

The Challenge Organisations (corporates and public organisations) will submit their challenges through our open call mechanism. S3E experts (selected through an open Expression of Interest) will work as deep tech brokers by reviewing the submitted challenges and selecting those with the highest degree of potential, impact and innovation, and feasibility.

The challenges will be published on the S3E website. After that, an Open Call for SMEs and start-ups will be launched inviting them to submit their ideas, products, and solutions that can address those specific challenges. Our evaluators will select the most mature and appropriate start-ups to match them with the Challenge Organisations.

The starting point of the Reverse Program are the challenges and/or problems that corporates face in complying with the UN SDG and creating a more sustainable business. Our deep tech brokers will formulate these challenges into specific problems, translating the requirements of the challenge organisations into precise specifications with which the start-ups can work.

During the program, the selected experts, i.e., the deep tech brokers will facilitate the process and support both the Challenge Organisations to define their specifications and frame their requirements and the solvers, the SMEs, and scale-ups that will design solutions to address these challenges.

In addition, the selected SMEs and scale-ups (The Solvers) can benefit from a customised innovation support program designed specifically for them and the coaching and technology brokerage services they will receive. The details of this programme will be announced in the call for the SMEs in 2023.

S3E Reverse is launching its first open call for applications to Challenge Organisations: Corporates and public organisations that have one or more challenges to contribute.

Any kind of public or private organisation can participate as long as it meets the following criteria:

● Is established in any country eligible for the Horizon Europe program including associated countries.

● Is facing a challenge related to any of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

● Requires a Deep Tech solution.

The Challenge Organisation will be invited to submit a simple and quick application to elaborate on the challenge it is facing. The application will be submitted through F6S platform, and it will contain the following questions:

● Challenge description.

● Technology domain/domains in need (Selection).

● Context of use.

● Technical key criteria, requirements, and constraints.

● Benefits that a solution will bring to the organisation.

● Potential commercial impact of finding a solution for the challenge.

● Relevant SDG (Selection).

Organisations may apply for more than one Challenge in the same Open Call, with different applications, preferably in a different area, and may also apply again in future Calls. Nevertheless, only one challenge per organisation will be selected.

It is also possible that 2 organisations submit a very similar challenge. In this case the Technology Broker will work with both of them (in full confidentiality) to combine the challenges in the best possible way and to make the best use of available resources.

The challenges are going to be selected by an independent committee of experts based on the following criteria:

The Selection Committee will be composed of three independent experts (invited through an Open Expression of Interest) and a member of the S3E consortium.

Each member will evaluate the challenges individually based on the above criteria. The final ranking will be decided on a consensus meeting of the committee. The committee will justify the final selection decision and prepare the report and the list of challenges that will be published.

In case a selected challenge requires further elaboration or justification, the selection committee will contact the challenge organizations to improve the descriptions of the challenges before the publications.

At least 15 challenges will be selected in this first call and will be published with a brief description and justification to our website to create the starting point for inviting scale-ups and SMEs to submit their solutions.

The decision of the committee cannot be appealed.

The results of the selection will be announced by 7 March 2023.

Challenge Organisations will be notified regardless the results of the selection process.

The open call for the challenge organizations will be launched on the 7th of November 2022.

The call will stay open till 10 February 2023 at 17:00 CET.

Between 10 February 2023 and 7 March 2023 our selection committee will evaluate the challenges, which will be announced by 7 March 2023.

By 14 March 2023, the open call for SMEs and scale-ups will open inviting them to submit solutions to the challenges. A detailed Guide for Applicants for scale-ups and SMEs will be published at the time of the opening of the call.

The call for the SMEs and scale-ups will stay open till 15 May 2023.

The proposals from scale-ups and SMEs will be evaluated by independent experts and the selected companies will be invited for an interview by our deep tech technology brokers.

Following the final selection interview the technology brokers will work with the selected scale-ups and SMEs to match the submitted challenges with the proposed solutions.

The F6S platform will be the entry point for all challenges submissions to S3E Open Calls, which is directly linked to the S3E website (https://south3e.eu/apply-now). Submissions received by any other channel after the deadline will be automatically discarded.

Interested Corporates and Public Organisations applicants can apply via: https://www.f6s.com/s3e-reverse/apply

Save your place at https://south3e.eu/

Download the Guide for applicants here.