What We Do
SMEs and Intermediary Organisations
The Vanguard Initiative offers a platform for businesses, clusters and knowledge institutes to meet and join forces in finding new innovative solutions.
Together, we aim to increase the competitiveness of companies and scale-up regional businesses in Europe-wide value-chains.
The Vanguard Initiative’s Pilot Projects offer unique possibilities for businesses, clusters, and knowledge centres to connect with like-minded partners across European regions that share a joint goal; to strengthen industrial innovation in Europe. The benefits of interregional partnerships, established through the Pilot Projects, include exploiting complementarities, project development at the demonstration and piloting stage towards upgrading and business exploitation (beyond TRL 5), opening and sharing specialised infrastructure, access to a larger community of end-users, pooling good practices as well as jointly addressing non-technological issues, etc.
The participating stakeholders in the Pilot Projects get access to exclusive networks of pilot plants, demo-sites, and partners, working together to accelerate the market uptake of advanced technologies and methodologies in areas of strategic importance to Europe’s industry.
SME success stories
In these unprecedented times, SMEs across Europe are facing profound transformation processes in which the technological challenges are becoming ever greater and, at the same time, the need of embracing the twin (digital and green) transition needs to be tackled quickly and decisively. Therefore, a strong positioning on the national and international market is a crucial success factor for small and medium-sized enterprises. External support through cooperations can be an important factor, but these are rarely free or without strings attached.
The Vanguard Initiative and its initiated SME Success Stories support program precisely tackles these challenges. Three Enterprises (AddCat B.V., Remembrane Srl. and Bond High-Performance 3D Technology) have been selected and supported by building cross-regional innovation practices. The program aimed to promote the participation of these companies in the activities of the Vanguard Initiative in order to foster interregional value chains and accelerate market adoption of their products and services.
The selected companies not only benefited from the strong network and experience of the Vanguard Initiative experts, but were also able to stimulate and expand interregional partnerships and collaborations in the Vanguard regions through an innovation voucher.
Read more about our voucher winners in our dedicated news features.
Circular Economy in Textile Sector: Expression of Interest
During the 2021 ESM Plenary event, Slovenia presented the "Circular Economy in Textile Secto
ADMA Energy takes part in the webinar “Offshore Renewable Energy: emerging opportunities for the offshore industry”
On November 9th, ART-ER (the business development agency of Emilia Romagna) in collaboration wit
ESM Plenary Event: the achievements of 2021 and the future plans for 2022
On the 9th of December the final event of the Efficient and Sustainable Manufacturing Pilot take place, co-coordinated by Giacomo Copani (AFIL, Lombardy), Patrick
VI 3DP Pilot is providing its members with a search engine and matchmaking tool for organisations in the 3D printing value chain
Where to look when organisations cannot find the expertise they need to complete a 3D printing project within their existing network?
Progress update from the Smart Health Pilot
Second Plenary Smart Health pilot meeting held on 20 October On the 20 of October 2021, the second Plenary Smart Health pilot meeting was organised.
Vanguard Initiative Annual Report 2020
The adversity of the Covid-19 situation has shown the very real value of collaboration, both within and between regions.
The Vanguard Initiative annual plan 2021
This annual plan sets out the programme of work that Vanguard Initiative will seek to accomplish during 2021 and is informed by discussions in the Annual Politica
Pilot Action plan 2021: 3DP
The 3DP Pilot action plan builds on the work carried out in 2020 and aims at presenting the expected objectives for 2021 in relation to the proposed project development.
Pilot action plan 2021: ADMA Energy
The ADMA Energy Pilot action plan builds on the work carried out in 2020 and aims at presenting the expected objectives for 2021 in relation to the proposed project development.
Pilot Action plan 2020: 3DP
This Annual plan is the main reference that will guide the 3DP Pilot activities during 2020.
Circular Economy in Textile and Plastic Sector - Event for Expression of Interest
Circular Economy in Textile and Plastic Sector
THE ROLE OF FACILITY CENTERS IN THE GROWTH OF ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING
Facility centres (in the context of this project) are public or private organisations providing quality services related to testing, validating and certifying 3D Printing solutions.
Vanguard meets Baden-Württemberg - Spurring European value chains - artificial intelligence (AI) & hydrogen and industrial
While providing a brief update on the current exciting developments of the AI pilot, the conference aims at showcasing existing regional best practices and ongoing region
VI 3DP Pilot Plenary Meeting
The next VI 3DP Pilot Plenary Meeting will be held on the 15th of December 2021!