*I don't know if they'll get anywhere with their R-and-D efforts, but "Smart Anything Everywhere" is an absurdly beautiful name for a government project.
Digital Innovation Initiatives based on European Networks of Competence Centres in H2020
Starting in FP7 and more broadly applied in Horizon 2020, the European Commission is supporting a group of innovation initiatives supporting SMEs and mid-caps across the economy in digital value creation. The formula for success is the collaboration of industrial actors across the complete value chain in a large number of small experiments facilitated by Europe’s leading competence centres. By going broad both in terms of applications and in terms of actors (e.g. SMEs and mid-caps both on provider and user side), this scheme is an important means for putting Europe’s industrial renaissance on a more solid foundation. The major initiatives are “ICT Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs” (I4MS), supporting largely process innovation, and “Smart Anything Everywhere” (SAE), supporting product and service innovation:
ICT Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs (I4MS) is addressing process innovation through digital technologies such as simulation, modelling and data-analytics; robotics; advanced lasers and smart sensors; cyber-physical systems and the Internet of Things (IoT). Launched in July 2013 in the context of the Factories of the Future contractual Public-Private Partnership (FoF cPPP), with 7 large innovation projects and an initial budget of 77M€, I4MS has proven to be on the right track towards helping SMEs and mid-caps step ahead in digital technologies. Currently 40 competence centres in 17 Member States, 150 experiments and 150 SMEs or mid-caps are participating in I4MS.
Smart Anything Everywhere (SAE) is supporting product and service innovation through digital technologies. Clustered in four projects with a total budget of 25M€, 23 of Europe’s leading competence centres in the components and systems value chain across 11 Member States will start from January 2015 to support 100 user-supplier experiments with 200 SMEs and mid-caps. Currently, Smart Anything Everywhere constitutes projects selected under ICT1 and ICT2 of Work Programme 2014/15....
