Innosuisse - Call for Flagships (Pre-proposal)

Submission deadline: 31.03.2021

The purpose of the flagship initiative is to stimulate innovation in areas relevant to a large part of the economy or society and to promote transdisciplinary project collaboration.

The Initiative strives for solutions to current or future challenges, which concern several actors and/or can only be solved through collaborative work. This new funding instrument is complementary to the purely bottom-up oriented and well-established regular innovation projects.

Objectives:

 Strengthen the competitiveness of the Swiss economy and/or contribute to the well-being of society by:

• creating new value along the value chain by increasing efficiencies;
• reducing costs or
• re-solving social relevant challenges in the public interest.

Systemic innovation, where value can only be derived if it is synergistically integrated with other complementary innovations, and transdisciplinarity, where actors from different disciplines collaborate, are key components of this new funding instrument.

Duration and funding

A flagship has a minimum duration of 3 years. An in-depth review meeting is held with all project partners and experts at the earliest at mid-term and at the latest 24 months after the start of a flagship. In addition, the Innosuisse funding for a flagship amounts to at least 4 million.

Themes

• Coping with COVID-19 induced acceleration of digital transformation

The proposals within this topic must concentrate on the following focus areas:

1. Education, learning and teaching
   
2. Tourism and travel industry
   
3. Real estate and urban planning
   
4. Healthcare and medical technology

This flagship topic aims to create the necessary incentive to bring research and implementation partners together in order to tackle the challenges of accelerated digital transformation holistically.

• Improving resilience and sustainability and reducing vulnerability of society, infrastructure and processes

The proposals within this topic must concentrate on one of the following focus areas:

1. Demographic shift
2. Supply chains
   
3. Resilience of ICT infrastructures
   
4. Decarbonisation

This flagship topic encourages and supports innovative flagships, which aim at mitigating and controlling these risks and improving the resilience as well as sustainability of society, infrastructure and processes through highly innovative solutions and new approaches.

For further information visit the Innosuisse dedicated page or contact Ms. Dafne Pedrazzoli.

* A consortium consists of more than 2 research partners, of which at least 1 is a university of applied sciences. Furthermore, at least 2 implementation partners must be involved.