The European agri-food sector faces pressing global challenges, including food security, climate change, and sustainability. To address these, it must adopt a knowledge-driven strategy rooted in cutting-edge research and innovations towards a sustainable food system. Promoting interoperable R&I careers that bridge academic and non-academic (NA) sectors is essential for fostering new solutions. LETSGROW is based on three pillars: training, mobility of talents and policy development to support this effort. These aim to foster collaboration between sectors, ensuring knowledge and resource exchange that mutual benefits. This mutualistic approach can nurture a fertile environment for R&I talents. Training focuses on equipping R&I talents with the evolving competencies of both sectors. LETSGROW addresses current gaps by building up talents’ skills as well as the institutional competence to support talents and their careers, offering a set of 37 training activities. Mobilities play a critical role in preparing R&I talents to work across sectors. LETSGROW offers: quality-based talent selection, a mentoring system, a return plan to maximise impact, and mobilities coupled with training. The cross-sectoral exchanges will allow NA talents to gain practical, industry-related experience, while gaining insights from academic research. Mobilities are designed so R&I talents gain critical competencies while involved entities establish and promote future collaborations. Evidence-based and needs-based policy is essential to enable positive change, and lessons learned from both training and mobility activities will feed co-creation of policy recommendations to enhance R&I talents career interoperability and employability. LETSGROW’s combined impact of targeted training, cross-sector mobilities, and supportive policy development will promote competitiveness of the R&I talents and the consortium, which gathers 11 Partners (7 from 5 Widening countries), including 4 NA entities.

The overall objective of CO-VALUE is to boost uptake and deployment of research results by adopting a co-valorisation approach that strengthens the role of societal actors in knowledge valorisation. Citizen engagement will be embedded in knowledge valorisation by deploying capacity building, peer learning actions and experimentation. CO-VALUE will capitalise on and contribute to EU initiatives such as the Knowledge Valorisation Platform, through the production, testing and improvement of best practices and lessons learned in two European territories: Alicante in Spain and Emilia Romagna in Italy. In each territory, quadruple-helix stakeholders from the research & innovation ecosystem will be involved in the co-design and implementation of co-valorisation, exploiting ongoing knowledge valorisation processes such as developing innovative solutions to address the lack of raw materials and its impact on citizens’ welfare (Alicante), or specific funding schemes and projects to introduce multi-stakeholder engagement in public-funded research (Emilia Romagna).The transfer of best practices and skills will be guaranteed by a comprehensive scheme of capacity building, peer learning and shadowing opportunities, both at local and international level. The involvement of umbrella organisations such as EBN, ERRIN and universities alliances will foster a wider uptake of CO-VALUE’s trainings and tools, thus supporting the implementation of new practices by knowledge valorisation agents beyond the project consortium. Incentives for researchers to engage with society, and for society to engage with researchers will be co-designed with stakeholders in each territory and implemented throughthe involvement of local R&I public administrations. Tangible changes in local co-valorisation agents will be exploited to showcase improvements, together with a co-assessment of enabling conditions, processes and impact performed together by all stakeholders involved.