Innovation
Innovations make an important contribution to tackling key societal challenges, ranging from environmental issues, security, access to food and ageing of the populations to health challenges. They often involve large investments and, consequently, risks.
The State encourages innovation in the economy in a variety of ways, through incentives for companies, tax breaks for R&D investments and enabling the integration of the innovation ecosystem.
Innovativeness of Slovenian companies
According to the Statistical Office data, more than half of all companies in Slovenia are innovation-active. The European Innovation Scoreboard ranks Slovenia and our companies as moderate innovators.
Innovation-active firms focus on innovation and continuously invest in research and development of new products, services, processes or business models. They are focused on creating new value, improving existing products or services, and increasing their competitive edge in the market. Innovation-active firms have R&D teams and invest in staff with relevant expertise and experience. Innovation-active firms partner with research institutions, universities or other companies to share knowledge, create synergies and foster innovation.
Knowledge Platform
The Knowledge Platform (content in Slovenian) is an initiative of the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Innovation to establish a more sustainable framework for keeping stakeholders regularly informed about current European initiatives and for cooperation, co-design and exchange of views in higher education, research and innovation.
Strategic Research and Innovation Partnerships (SRIPs)
Slovenia promotes investment in research and innovation through a variety of measures targeting the priority areas identified in the Slovenian Sustainable Smart Specialisation Strategy (S5) (content in Slovenian). Each of these areas is covered by one Strategic Research and Innovation Partnership.
S5 identifies 10 priority application areas, namely:
- smart cities and communities,
- a horizontal network of information and communication technologies,
- smart buildings and the wood chain home,
- networks for the transition to the circular economy,
- sustainable food,
- sustainable tourism,
- factories of the future,
- health-medicine,
- mobility,
- materials.
Strategic Research and Innovation Partnerships (SRIPs) or strengthening research and innovation cooperation between otherwise independent stakeholders: companies, research organisations and other relevant development stakeholders working in a specific application area of the Sustainable Smart Specialisation Strategy, with a view to systematically integrating them into international value chains and providing a comprehensive support environment in Slovenia.
Call for proposals to promote the recruitment of researchers in industry
The measure aims to promote new recruitment of researchers in the economy and thus strengthen research departments. The measure targets researchers who wish to gain experience to face challenges in the economy and companies that wish to acquire quality human resources to strengthen their R&D and innovation teams. The call for proposals is under preparation and will be published on the website of the ARIS public agency (content in Slovenian).
International research and innovation projects
International programmes for networking, knowledge transfer and innovation promotion are as follows:
- Horizon Europe (2021–2027)
- Eureka
- Eurostars
- Innowwide
- EIC – Accelerator
European Partnership Co-funded by the European Union
Horizon Europe (2021–2027)
Horizon Europe (content in Slovenian) is the European Union's new framework programme for research and innovation and will be active between 2021 and the end of 2027. The strategic planning process of Horizon Europe focuses primarily on global challenges and the pillar of European industrial competitiveness of companies. It also includes a strand to broaden participation and strengthen the European Research Area.
The total amount of funding earmarked for new activities will be the largest ever, exceeding EUR 95.5 billion.
Eureka
The international Eureka programme enables Slovenian companies to participate in international consortia and carry out projects with foreign partners to deliver competitive technologies and products and their application and to cooperate and transfer knowledge.
Eureka is an international technology initiative launched in 1985 by French and German Presidents Mitterand and Kohl, with the aim of making the EU economy more competitive and in particular competitive with the US and Japanese economies and the emerging industrial countries in SE Asia, by fostering cooperation between companies and research institutions.
The governments of the acceding countries have pledged to support the international Eureka initiative by supporting their national partners and co-financing the work of the Secretariat in Brussels. 41 Member States, including the European Commission, are now participating in Eureka.
From the outset, Eureka has operated in the context of the common European Research Area (ERA) and, unlike the EU Framework Programmes for Research and Development, has focused primarily on the commercialisation of knowledge through tangible innovation projects.
Slovenia joined the Eureka programme in 1994. The Eureka website, provides detailed information on Slovenia's participation and on the supported Slovenian projects.
Eurostars
Eurostars is the European Partnership for Innovative Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, which provides a fast-track way of research funding. The partnership is co-funded by the European Union through Horizon Europe.
Eurostars offers ambitious and innovative micro, small and medium-sized enterprises access to national and European research funding. Through a national entry point, it provides a fast application process, a coordinated funding timeline and rapid results that can be quickly made available to the market.
Benefits of Eurostars programme:
- it focuses on ambitious SMEs engaged in development and innovation in high-tech sectors,
- it stimulates market-oriented innovation in all non-military technological fields,
- it supports innovation on a single signed contract basis,
- it offers central evaluation by international experts,
- it provides predictable procedures and short contract signing times.
Innowwide
Innowwide is an incentive programme to assess the viability of innovative business solutions in global markets. Innowwide is funded by the European Union as part of the European Partnership for Innovative SMEs.
The aim of the project is to encourage European innovative SMEs and start-ups to carry out Viability Assessment Projects (VAPs) in markets outside Europe. The Innowwide call for proposals aims to bring European highly innovative SMEs to the forefront of international markets to increase the take-up of European innovative solutions in markets outside Europe. A VAP takes no longer than six months.
European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator
The European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator is designed to support the most innovative projects that have a high global market potential. Support starts from EUR 0.5 million per project; applications are invited in particular from projects that are not able to obtain other forms of funding in the market due to their daring ideas, but which show a high potential for success on a global scale.