Deep Tech Innovation Programme FOR AGRIfood

The overall goal of DIP4Agri is to accelerate capacity building in innovation and entrepreneurship of higher education institutions (HEI), in the domains of deep tech in agri-food by-product valorisation. This project will integrate knowledge in deep tech fields (biotechnology, clean technologies, photonics, and AI and machine learning) and innovation and entrepreneurial capabilities to convert the problem of agri-food waste into business opportunities. DIP4Agri will build a systematic transformation for effective and long lasting change, leveraging on existing structures and procedures to achieve impactful improvements in the regional innovation ecosystem. Thus, this project will integrate an education programme with a deep tech basis and customised content and will provide mentoring for the development of solutions by problem owners (industry, NGOs, municipalities, investors), aiming to address challenges in agri-food by-products and wastes, exploit knowledge transfer and foster networking. This will contribute to DIP4Agri vision for 2030: to strengthen the innovation and entrepreneurial capacity of HEIs and empower student entrepreneurs and non-academic staff to generate breakthroughs that will benefit of the regional socio-economic ecosystem with high potential to impact the broader European landscape. To that end, DIP4Agri will create a pool of knowledge, methods, tools and valuable networks that will maximise the contribution of deep tech to support the development of resilient and competitive value chains and economic growth.
The structured approach design by this project will ensure that the entrepreneurial mindset and competencies are developed and remain inside the organisations (sustainable change), allow for the transferability of the methodology to institutions outside the consortium (replication) and strengthen the regional and European innovation potential (competitive advantage).
Because the challenges and the perceived benefits for HEI need to be clear, we opted for a clear focus of the entrepreneurial program, circular bioeconomy, to allow HEI to detail programs and identify stakeholders in a more meaningful manner.
Our vision is to harness the innovation and entrepreneurial bio-economy ecosystem by facilitating the linkages between the actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and procedures and policies within HEIs to facilitate business creation and scaling. By developing a program aimed at HEI we aim to scale the programme to wider reach to become the European reference of science-based (tech based) startups.
Specific objectives of DIP4Agri:
•Improve the degree to which entrepreneurship and innovation is introduced in the core ecosystem of HEI
•Create support structures between HEI and industry/start-ups for innovation-driven research
•Knowledge transfer and entrepreneurial capacity development
•Build innovation capacity in the agri-food chain through the integration of deep tech activities
•Develop and implement entrepreneurial curricula in HEI, for students and staff
•Accelerate the TRL level of solutions for the agri-food ecosystem
•How? Training in entrepreneurship, mentoring with industry, possible provision of services