The ICE- Innovation by Creative Economy partnership, coordinated by Fraunhofer and chaired by interim CEO, Bernd Fesel, was selected from among five consortia in a process finalised on June 22nd, in Budapest, Hungary. The winning proposition is designed to unlock the latent value of the cultural and creative sectors and industries to become a gamer changer for Europe’s Green, Digital and Social Transformation. EIT Culture & Creativity will receive over 150 million euro support from the EIT over two seven-year periods before becoming self-sustainable.
Upon the “Created in Europe” motto, the ICE partnership assembles a carefully crafted pan-European consortium of 50 excellent universities, research institutions, companies, investors, and associations relevant to all CCSI in 20 nations. “Diversity is the front door to innovation. We are proud to have built a consortium that is diverse in many ways, but especially one that honours the nature of European CCSI: ours is a sector made by multitude of SMEs and very small players”, says Bernd Fesel, Interim CEO and spokesperson of the winning team.
The CCSI are key drivers of economic growth and job creation across Europe. They account for 5.5 percent of the EU’s total GDP and 6.2 percent of Europe’s workforce, 80% for all 2.9 million CCSI companies are small and micro enterprises. At the same time, they are not just business -they stand for European diversity as well as its unity. EIT Culture & Creativity will be key to support Europe’s recovery and cohesion. “This will be an Open innovation Community: open to entrepreneurs, artists, freelancers, social innovators, cultural agents. Innovation and change are possible when the all players -the large and the small, for profit and non-profit- meet at eye level in collaboration spaces for addressing pressing societal challenges”, concludes Fesel.
With headquarters in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, EIT Culture & Creativity will have six subsidiary offices, called Co-Location Centres, in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bologna, Helsinki, Kosice and Vienna. These regional hubs will realise this open vocation by engaging and channelling needs and expectations of local and regional ecosystems and provide relevant KIC services suited to each ecosystem and stakeholder groups, including students, startups, VC investors, and policy makers.
About Knowledge Innovation Communities
The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) strengthens Europe’s ability to innovate by powering solutions to pressing global challenges and by nurturing entrepreneurial talent to create sustainable growth and skilled jobs in Europe. The EIT is an EU body and an integral part of Horizon Europe, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. The Institute supports dynamic pan-European partnerships, EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities, composed of leading companies, research labs and universities each dedicated to solving a pressing global challenge, from climate change to health, to renewable energy. Together with their leading partners, the EIT Community offers:
- entrepreneurial education degrees and courses across Europe that transform students into entrepreneurs such as Dora Palfi of imagiLabs, whose helping introduce coding to young women and girls, supported by EIT Digital.
- business creation and acceleration services that take ideas and budding businesses to the next level such as Northvolt manufacturing the world’s greenest lithium-ion batteries, supported by EIT InnoEnergy
- innovation driven research projects that turn ideas into products connecting partners, investors and expertise, such as Diabeloop – D4Kids, an artificial intelligence system to improve type 1 diabetes management for children, supported by EIT Health.
The EIT is Europe’s largest innovation ecosystem bringing together close to 3,000 partners from top business, research and education organisations across Europe in over 60 innovation hubs across Europe. The EIT has powered more than 3,800 start-ups and scale-ups, created more than 1,400 new products and services that have gone to raise more than EUR 3.9 billion in external capital. More than 3,800 students have graduated from EIT labelled master and doctoral programmes and over 100,000 have participated in EIT Community entrepreneurial trainings.
