On the 7th and 8th of March 2024, the I3 Coordinators Days took place in Brussels where POLIMI, ISMC and N-ABLE had the opportunity of presenting BATMASS project as the biggest, in terms of funding, I3 project. Within the Smart Manufacturing topic (I3-2021-INV1-MANU), BATMASS aims to implement the first EU Circular Battery Valley offering a portfolio of cross-regional investments in TRL6+ innovations in circular technologies and processes for battery materials.
I3 Instrument: Empowering innovation with advisory and financial support
The Interregional Innovation Investments (I3) Instrument focuses on the support to interregional innovation investment on the road towards commercialisation and scale-up phases giving them the tools to overcome regulatory and other barriers and bring their project to investment level by supporting interregional innovation investments at high technology readiness levels (TRL 6-9).
It represents an opportunity to support interregional portfolios of companies’ investments bringing innovation to the market and boosting the competitiveness of EU interregional value chains.
By focusing on existing interregional partnerships that emerged around concrete smart specialisation strategies (see i.e. partnerships on the S3 Thematic Smart Specialisation Platform) the I3 Instrument combines the S3 bottom up approach with investment support in concrete EU strategic priorities.
Building on unexploited regional innovation potential, the ambition is to mobilise synergies and complementarities with other EU funding programmes and initiatives such as: Horizon Europe (in particular European Innovation Ecosystems), Digital Europe Programme, Single Market Programme and Interreg Europe. The objective of the I3 Instrument is to focus on supporting the demonstration, commercialisation and scale-up phases of interregional innovation investments.