GOALS

GIENAHS Alliance aims at addressing the strategic issue of interaction between universities and the particular target represented by SMEs that, although they are the real driving force of the European economy, still face considerable difficulties in managing R&D processes.

Innovation plays an increasingly important role in our economy both for companies and citizens, seen as workers or as consumers, due to its contribution to the acceleration and improvement in creating new products and services. But there’s no innovation without research and education: to achieve the objective of investing by 2020 the 3% of EU GDP on R&D, in the next decade Europe needs to train many more researchers and eliminate obstacles to their mobility.

Knowledge Triangle: education, research and innovation

-      to promote improvements in quality, excellence in innovation and internationalization;

-      to elevate the quality of training of Industrial Researchers and internal company staff;

-      to improve the "knowledge triangle", linking education, research, and innovation.

Compared GIENAHS targets: high school institutions and small and medium enterprises

GIENAHS intends to contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the Knowledge Alliances and in particular:

-      to improve key skills and capabilities, with an emphasis on their relevance to the labour market, through greater opportunities of mobility for researchers and enhanced cooperation between universities and SMEs;

SOLUTION

GIENAHS fosters the MATCHING between HEIs and SMEs through the following steps:​

-  defining a EU standard of HEIs/SMEs interaction to better enhance the territorial competitiveness due to the co-creation of knowledge and innovation;

-  define a new methodological approach to design industrial PhD paths “SMEs oriented” targeted on the specific needs of European SMEs that will pragmatically allow the integration of different cultural approaches to R&D;

-  testing the new methodological approach by designing a new industrial PhD path “SMEs oriented” in Manufacturing field;

-  proposing the harmonisation of Industrial PhD disciplines in Europe, to concretely promote the

Matching between HEIs and SMEs

mobility of researchers; regulate, therefore, the industrial research doctorate at national level in six partner countries, comparing them with the European provisions;

-  setting up a stable Observatory able to create virtuous and fruitful cooperation among SMEs, HEIs and researchers multiplying attractive employment opportunities for industrial research in European SMEs.

GIENAHS features

RESULTS

SCIENTIFIC publications, papers and awards