Last July I was in Toulouse for the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) to moderate “Making our ambition a reality under Horizon Europe”, a satellite event focused on Communicating, Disseminating and Exploiting the results of the EU research programmes.

This is the latest in a series of posts by META staff on improving the exploitation of EC-financed research projects. Subscribe to get the next ones, our downloadables and more.

ESOF was a real festival of science, innovation and policy, coupled with real opportunities for learning and exchange. With over 100 conferences, there was something for everyone: cutting-edge science and technology showcases, stimulating debates about science and technology in today’s society, policy discussions, career guidance for young scientists, and much more. The obligatory video tells more.

Organised by the EU Commission’s Directorate General Research & Innovation (“DG RTD”), the workshop focused on the Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation of results stemming from the EU's current and future Horizon research programmes.

“Comms & DE”, as they’re increasingly being called, have been a high priority for the EU’s RTD programmes for decades, and yet even today – as explored last year by myself and my colleague Andrea di Anselmo – there’s still widespread confusion about the differences between them:

“only 9% of the people we helped considered themselves ‘very knowledgeable about exploitation’, and 88% wanted to learn more… So what is the difference between Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation?” - How to treat your European research project like a startup

(Update, 17 September: the Commission just published an executive summary of a report on the Common Exploitation Booster, from which the above data came)

What’s new in Horizon Europe?

This distinction was the first core theme of the workshop, which started with “What's new in Horizon Europe for Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation?”. In this session we explored the common minimum requirements for communication and visibility being established by the EU for all their projects, research or otherwise.





Speakers with me at the “What’s new?” session were DG RTD’s Anna Panagopoulou, Common Support Centre Director (centre), and Minna Wilkki, Communications Head of Unit (right).





Horizon Europe is still only a proposal, so these early indications are provisional. However, all speakers made it abundantly clear that Comms & DE are not just non-negotiable for tomorrow's 'Horizon Europe' programme - they are a priority right now, in the last two years of Horizon 2020:

“Participants must get this right from the outset: Exploitation, Dissemination and Communication are not the same thing! ” - Anna Panagopoulou, Director, DG RTD

To begin with, Anna went on to explain, they have different goals:

Communication: informing and reaching out to wider society

Dissemination: describing and making results available so that they can be exploited

so that they can be exploited Exploitation: making use of results

"D&E is not the task of one, but the responsibility of all stakeholders," she pointed out. "It should not be seen as an additional burden or a secondary task, but as an opportunity to increase the impact of R&I. We need a change of mind and create a proactive D&E culture."

Interrelated, but not Identical

The reason so many participants get confused, however, is clear: these three activities are not only interrelated, they also use similar resources.

At META, for example, we often see projects where one partner has all three activities simply because they have the best comms team in the consortium. This is deeply flawed – communicating the benefits of EU research to wider European society requires very different content and promotional tactics to disseminating research results to potential users. Exploiting one’s own research results, moreover, is completely different again!

Each activity needs its own specific approach. Speaking for META, I believe the days of one workpackage covering all three activities should, in most cases, be a thing of the past.

“link these activities where they need to be linked, and separate them where they should be separate”

Project Coherence through Lean Canvas

On the other hand, these activities are all interrelated, and many activities, tactics and content can be used by two or even all three activities. Surely separating them means missing out on synergies?

The best way we have found to link these activities where they need to be linked, and separate them where they should be separate, is to have a coherent framework underpinning the project as a whole.

We’re big fans, for example, of adapting techniques from the world of startups and agile development, such as the lean canvas (see Get some energy into your pitch! and How to treat your European research project like a startup ). Adapted to EC research, these can help develop a vision of the project to underpin all of these activities, while allowing each to focus on its goals – i.e., focusing each activity on the needs of its own, specific audience.

“not all Solutions have Problems, or by extension Customers”

The lean canvas, of course, doesn’t just help answer the right questions about a project’s Comms & DE activities: it ensures the project itself is oriented towards the market. To summarise:

Every Customer has a Problem

Every Problem has a Solution

But not all Solutions have Problems, or by extension Customers!

The lean canvas ensures the proposed project addresses an observed Problem. This builds a client base into the project from the outset, increasing the chance of research results that will make an Impact. But you won’t get the full benefit of this technique unless you use it from the project conception phase.

“Developing amazing project results is not the same thing as making an amazing Impact”

Beyond box-ticking

Designing a coherent project is one thing, implementing it is something else.

Another EC speaker - Philippe Tulkens (Deputy Head of Unit, Energy Strategy) - helped launch a discussion on how Comms and D&E can become an integral part of EU research projects.

"If researchers and innovators don't demonstrate the potential transformative impact of their work … it will be difficult to convince politicians that research and innovation bring solutions to Europe’s problems," he pointed out. "Dissemination and exploitation is therefore not just a legal, but a moral obligation for all researchers funded with public money.”

This is where I find an entrepreneurial attitude is so important. How do you view your project action plan? As a deliverable – something you need to deliver as a condition of funding, as a box to tick? Or does it plan actual activities, harnessing real commitments from your partners, designed to get an innovation out of the lab and aimed at the market?

Some aspects of this discussion echoed META’s recommendations from running the Common Exploitation Booster:

“The mid-term project review is an excellent opportunity to … focus the project’s second half on exploiting its expected results. It must evolve from a box-ticking exercise to a critical moment in the project lifecycle… ” - Improving Exploitation of EC Research: Answers from the Common Exploitation Booster

Entrepreneurialism, in other words, is not just needed from project participants – the way the Commission manages the project lifecycle has a huge role in encouraging (or stifling) project Impact. In the final analysis, however, it's up to the project participants to deliver value to European industry and society, and better communicate how we are doing it.

“Beneficiaries of EU R&I funding are best placed to communicate about the benefits and impact of their research on citizens and society at large” - Minna Wilkki, Head of Unit Communications, DG RTD

I was greatly encouraged by the way our workshop participants got involved in this discussion, reinforcing my impression that this is really becoming an urgent issue – not just for the Commission, but for everyone involved in research and innovation across Europe.

The workshop was not all theory: we also explored the difference between research and impact through best practice presentations from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute, the Netherlands’ TNO (above), Spain’s Institute of Health Carlos III, and others.

Three Take-aways for Focusing on Impact

Don’t get me wrong – Horizon Europe will still focus on supporting high-quality research across Europe’s internal borders and with the rest of the world.

But it must be research that has a real chance of making a positive impact on Europe’s competitiveness and society. And the best way of ensuring that is to:

Orient the project to the market from the proposal phase, using tools like lean canvas. If you get something wrong at this stage, you will have enormous difficulty fixing it later.

Continue market research throughout the project, so that if the market or legal environment changes during your project, you’ll be able to do something about it. While the EC doesn’t expect every researcher in Europe to become an entrepreneur, all researchers are supposed to have some idea of what’s going on outside the lab!

Take Communications, Dissemination and Exploitation seriously. Each is worth its own set of clearly defined tasks – ideally its own workpackage - rather than a single poorly defined ‘comms programme’, managed in isolation from the rest of the project. And if you base all three activities on the answers found on your lean canvas, you’ll be able to extract synergies efficiently, without getting the different activities mixed up.

"the Commission wants to support projects with a real chance of making an Impact, and those chances are undermined by under-resourcing Comms & DE"

Finally, it’s crucial to remember that these activities take resources – I’ve lost count of the number of projects I’ve seen where they suddenly realise they need a patent attorney … but don’t have budget for one.

While it’s perfectly natural to want to focus funding purely on the actual research, remember this mantra as you discuss budget within your project consortium: the Commission wants to support projects with a real chance of making an Impact, and those chances are undermined by under-resourcing Comms & DE.

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ESOF – EuroScience Open Forum is the largest multidisciplinary science meeting in Europe.