“KATANA - Emerging industries as key enablers for the adoption of advanced technologies in the agrifood sector" supports European SMEs in the agrifood value chain to simultaneously access knowledge, technology, capital and markets in order to respond to the global competitive environment. KATANA aims to provide this access to companies by leveraging upon the multiplier potential of cross-border/cross-sectoral collaboration and the systemic approach which homogenizes services towards the overall aim to place new products/ services in the market. KATANA proposes a systemic approach by combining (i) an innovative selection and funding scheme based on peer to peer evaluation and crowdfunding; (ii) a holistic portfolio of support services covering the entire KATANA lifecycle and (iii) three large scale demonstrators capitalizing upon emerging industries (eco-industries, mobile services and personalized health). KATANA is a cluster-driven project, bringing together 7 active clusters of SMEs from all over Europe (from Scandinavia to Mediterranean and Balkans) covering the entire ecosystem, namely agriculture, food production and ICT/ emerging industries. At the same time a diverse and strong presence of five SMEs – technology providers within the consortium will guarantee that the technological infrastructure for the large scale demonstrators will be delivered by actors who understand the needs of the community. The innovative selection method and the corresponding algorithms will be provided by an RTD organization with long experience in organizing and running Open Calls and competitions for SMEs.

For the EU economy to grow sustainably it needs to re-industrialise, leveraging innovation and digital intelligence. Blockchain Innovation Spaces (Block.IS) envisions to build an open and collaborative cross-border, cross-sectoral innovation ecosystem that fosters the use of this cutting-edge technology in three vital sectors for the European economy: agrifood, logistics and finance. Block.IS will bring together (connect) actors (with an emphasis on SMEs and clusters) from these three heavily interconnected sectors, with SMEs/ innovators, to catalyse their cooperation towards innovation-driven and mutual growth (boost). The catalysation is aimed at networking the members of the ecosystem, raising understanding of the benefits of blockchain technology and stimulating the creation of new blockchain-based solutions - Cluster Missions and Clusters-Innovators Assembly. Block.IS will support innovators (SMEs) all the way from ideation to commercialisation offering them tailored business and technical support as well as direct funding, through a novel funnel approach - Innovate > Experiment > Commercialise acceleration programme. As such, the project will directly foster and strengthen competitiveness of digital SMEs (that will develop the solutions) and of the clusters and SMEs of the three verticals which will use them to offer added value to their customers. The Block.IS consortium is a fusion between: Tech founders and SMEs community (F6S), sector-oriented clusters and sectoral associations (VOICT, FEDACOVA, IT-Log, DSME, FTS), international innovation and Tech-transfer specialists (INO, IDI, CIVITTA, SYN) and Blockchain tech experts (INTRA, TNO); with an outreach of >1,017,000 SME. Block.IS invests 81% of the EC budget in SMEs and 51% through Open Calls (€2,800,000)

Although Western Balkan countries (WBCs) have improved in terms of R&I performance, research and innovation efforts should be further enhanced for bridging the remaining ‘gap’ with the rest European regions. RRI principles can act as enablers for the sustainable development of the local R&I systems, enhancing the effectiveness of R&I strategies contributing to the advancement of Western Balkan socio-economic progress in a transparent, open, and inclusive way through active participation of all quadruple helix actors. WBC-RRI.NET aims to foster the application of RRI principles at the territorial level in five (5) Western Balkan -4 region-level and 1 country-level- R&I ecosystems and promote a multi-level steering R&I governance framework in the WBCs. RRI principles will act as enablers to the shared learning and diffusion of R&I governance innovations at territorial level, enhancing R&I planning, including S3 Strategies in the WBCs. The project’s approach evolving through an analytical, reflective and implementation thread, will operationally address the 5 WB territories (partners represent all parts of the quadruple helix) and subsequently influence the wider WB region, by activating the embedding of RRI into their R&I ecosystems. This will be realised by RRI activities throughout the entire project (horizontal aspect), raising an active dialogue in the wider WB region and fostering the comprehension of all RRI pillars under a holistic framework based on a ‘smart directionality’ approach, offering stakeholder engagement with a focus on citizen participation. Alongside, 5 RRI ‘anchor’ initiatives (vertical aspect), as interventions touching in-depth specific RRI keys, territorial features and scientific domains, will allow RRI principles to be rooted in the territorial ecosystems leading to concrete impact to R&I territorial policies and societal regional needs. Finally, impact evaluation and dissemination activities focus on the project’s long-term sustainability.

PUZZLE will implement a highly usable cybersecurity, privacy and data protection management marketplace targeted at SMEs&MEs that enables them to monitor, forecast, assess and manage their cyber risks through targeted cybersecurity services, increase their cybersecurity awareness through the efficient heterogeneous information processing, the establishment of knowledge sharing with other SMEs&MEs and extract insights based on advanced analytics. The PUZZLE will track the relationships among the cyber assets of each SME&ME, considering the available network, compute and storage infrastructure and use them to efficiently calculate individual, cumulative and propagated risks, as well as recommend and apply mitigation actions. The PUZZLE will support vulnerabilities and threats assessment in a collaborative manner based on the homogenization of data provided by the SMEs&MEs. Data will be collected by resource handling and monitoring agents applied over Cloud/Edge Computing, IoT and network infrastructure. Such data will be enriched with data provided in relevant open repositories. SMEs&MEs data sharing will take place through blockchain-based technologies for secure data management. Based on the calculated risks and the provided graph topology, the application of resilient defensive strategies will be recommended, considering the type of infrastructure used by the SME&ME. Automated defensive strategies deployment mechanisms are also going to be made available, reducing a lot the complexity and the burden for the deployment of the provided services by cybersecurity managers in SMEs&MEs. Special emphasis will be given on the usability and the rise of competitiveness of the PUZZLE Marketplace, by designing solutions that can be easily on-boarded by external cybersecurity providers and can be seamlessly adopted by the end-users taking into account their preferences. The provided services will be made accessible through the SMEs&MEs Dashboard that will be developed.