The WEnnovate project is a collaborative effort to create new systems and solutions to address urgent complex and systemic challenges. The focus is on the transition to sustainable renewable energy and cross-sector activities in energy and digital innovations, aligned with the European Commission's energy directives. The project aims to strengthen the pathways towards Clean Energy for All Europeans and boost Local Energy Communities and Energy Sharing. Social entrepreneurs and professionals play a critical role in developing new solutions to societal problems and environmental challenges, making them important drivers of innovation. The project is divided into two phases: an exploratory phase focusing on social entrepreneurs with deep tech and digital innovations, and a stakeholder engagement phase focusing on engaging stakeholders to gather insights for faster alignment on policy advice and action planning. The project's partners come from Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, and the Netherlands, with a complementary role in ensuring the widest possible engagement of dialogue with ecosystem actors and the sound delivery of transitional action plans. The WEnnovate project aims to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and the strategic objectives of the New European Innovation Agenda. The project will conduct research and co-design methodology to building partnerships, analysing existing innovation agendas and strategies, identifying areas of competitive advantage for sustainable economic growth, and mapping gaps, needs, and opportunities. The consortium will also enhance synergies and complementarities of their programmes and encourage the alignment of their innovation and related policies impacting innovation in line with the new European Innovation Agenda, as well as creating new frameworks to support ecosystems.

Based on a detailed analysis of the situation of UA Innovation Ecosystem after Russian invasion, partners (6 Ukrainian partners and 11 partners from 11 other EU member States with an extensive outreach capacity spanning across key EU and global markets) have put together a proposal aimed at providing support to counteract the harm done to Ukrainian startups and deep tech SMEs in the short term, building a framework that supports the Ukrainian Government’s goal of becoming a ‘start-up nation’, and increasing the role of innovators and the deep tech industry in driving growth. This will be achieved through a comprehensive portfolio of support services that combine cascade funding (10k-25k-50k grants), access to finance actions (connecting to public funds and private investors, training on EIC, EIT and other cascading opportunities etc.), deep-tech-focused incubation and acceleration programmes, and market access initiatives (targeting 10+ countries, soft landing in 10 key sectors/verticals, and working spaces in 50+ locations across Europe). Pan-European integration – which brings UA innovation closer to investors, accelerators, potential buyers, innovation agencies and peers - will also be a key component of this project. The Consortium is led by FBA (PL-based and leader of FSTP management) with key support from USF, Ukraine’s public agency to support SMEs, which will invest its own resources and guarantee synergies with UA. Other partners key to guarantee services delivery and wide impact are: EITH (KICs), PNP (investors), LXI (EU innovation stakeholders), CORKBIC (BIC network), IHS (Impact Hub Network), IOP (EEN in UA). Circa 1,000 innovators, start-ups and deep tech SMEs located in UA or created by Ukrainian citizens in other EU countries after 24.02.2022 will benefit from said support, with at least 400 expected to gain a mix of financial and non-financial support, and many others expected to access non-financial support while seeking other sources of funding.