Second DIVA Open call

The digital sector is rapidly evolving with the regular emergence of new technologies. The Agrofood sector is currently showing a growing interest in new digital technologies as an option for improving existing services at farm level or in food industries and creating new services through a global concept of “smart agriculture” or “smart food systems”. For the environmental sector, the large amount of data obtained through digital technologies contributes to monitoring effectiveness of bioeconomy policies in terms of security, resource-efficiency and mitigation of climate change.

Direct and Indirect support to SMEs will be provided in order to accelerate new ideas all along the innovation chain, from idea emergence up to the demonstration and the internationalization stages with a focus on the creation of new value chains.

Specifically, the project will support innovative SMEs by:

• Fostering new cross-sectoral and cross-border collaborations, set-up collaboration of stakeholders around joint business models
• Introducing SME with potential customers
• Having them participate in large scale demonstrators
• Supporting them at building critical mass offers at the European scale to reinforce their position in the EU-wide market
• Finding value-adding investors able to accelerate their growth

In line with the process described, DIVA thus is able to deliver a full set of types of vouchers through competitive calls structure in three different instruments :

Maturation Instrument : 10K€

• Business maturation voucher: aims at funding activities to mature a business model supported by innovative products, processes, services and technologies related to digitalisation of Agrofood, environmental or forestry sector.
• Technology maturation voucher: aims at funding activities to produce plans and arrangements or design for new, altered or improved products, processes or services, including prototyping or testing, and bringing them from a TRL 4-5 to a TRL 5-6*. R&D activities may be included.

Demonstration Instrument : 25-60K€

• Small scale demonstration voucher: aims at funding activities to validate the technical and economic viability of a new or improved product, process, service, solution or technology in an operational (or near to operational) environment and bring them from TRL 5 to TRL 6. Activities and consortium can address part of a value chain.
• Large scale demonstration voucher: aims at funding the same activities than above but from a higher starting technology readiness level, bringing them from TRL 6 to TRL 7. Activities and consortiums should address and demonstrate a whole complete value chain.

Internationalization Instrument : 30K€

• Internationalization voucher: aims at funding activities to foster internationalization of a group of SMEs with a demonstrated value chain, aiming at catalysing their development, facilitating access to an international network of high-level consultants and experts, enabling SMEs to rapidly improve their value proposition thus ensuring their long-term success at an international level.