KRAKOW - The European Institute of Innovation and Technology said it is launching a contest to reward entrepreneurs in its knowledge and innovation communities, in an effort to encourage more enterprise in Europe. The contest is organised in cooperation with Science|Business.
The Budapest-based EIT, a three-year-old European Union initiative, said it will pick a winning venture next year from among each of its three Knowledge and Innovation Communities, or KICs. The groups – in the fields of ICT, sustainable energy and climate-change technologies – are large consortia of universities, companies and research organisations that operate across Europe, and are intended to be innovation hubs. The groups began work in 2010, but already include numerous small companies and entrepreneurs.
The EIT’s cooperation with Science|Business entails the London- and Brussels-based company assisting with the awards process, and collaborating in a final, jointly organised conference and awards ceremony on 21 February in Brussels.
An EIT statement called entrepreneurship “at the very heart” of its work. The institute, formed in 2008 with an initial EU budget of €308 million, is attempting to spark more innovation in Europe by pulling researchers, educators, companies and investors into the three big KICs – to make the so-called knowledge triangle of research, education and industry work better in Europe. Each of the KICs is running interlinked activities across the knowledge triangle, with the aim of producing marketable innovations based on European research and a new crop of young technology entrepreneurs.
The EIT added that “the 2012 Entrepreneurship Award will put the spotlight on and encourage entrepreneurial ventures within the KICs’ thematic areas.”
It said each of the three KICs – Climate-KIC, EIT ICT Labs, and KIC InnoEnergy – will nominate three ventures to deliver a business pitch at the February 21 Brussels conference. The winners will be announced that day. At the event, the Science|Business Innovation Board AISBL, a non-profit association co-founded by Science|Business and business schools INSEAD and ESADE, will also announce winners of its own annual prizes, the ACES Academic Enterprise Awards. These awards since 2008 have given public recognition to 45 university spin-outs across Europe, helping them find new investors and customers.
More information on the EIT website.
Receive the Funding Newswire each Tuesday, our Policy Bulletin each Thursday, and news about bridging Europe’s east-west innovation gap twice a month in The Widening. 
