COR­NET (COl­lect­ive Research NETworking)

COR­NET is a net­work of min­is­tries and fund­ing agen­cies that com­bine their exist­ing fund­ing schemes to increase the com­pet­it­ive­ness of small and medi­um-sized enter­prises (SMEs). In this way, COR­NET sup­ports new fund­ing organ­isa­tions world­wide to intro­duce pilot actions and schemes for pre-com­pet­it­ive Col­lect­ive Research.

Par­ti­cip­a­tion in a COR­NET pro­ject allows SMEs, SME asso­ci­ations or groups and research organ­isa­tions to build up an inter­na­tion­al net­work and to bene­fit from know-how and resources that might not be avail­able in their coun­try or region. COR­NET fea­tures high suc­cess rates and short time to con­tract. The COR­NET part­ners sup­port applic­ants in find­ing the right part­ners for their pre-com­pet­it­ive Col­lect­ive Research projects.

Col­lect­ive Research

SMEs are often con­fron­ted with chal­lenges such as new secur­ity or envir­on­ment­al norms, new mater­i­als, or the need to innov­ate their pro­duc­tion pro­cesses. Most SMEs lack fin­an­cial and per­son­nel resources to per­form research activ­it­ies that would be neces­sary to tackle these issues. Col­lect­ive Research offers the solu­tion: sev­er­al enter­prises of the same branch (or even across sec­tors) with a com­mon pre-com­pet­it­ive prob­lem join forces with­in a pro­ject con­sor­ti­um. Usu­ally sup­por­ted by an SME organ­isa­tion, the pro­ject con­sor­ti­um receives fund­ing for assign­ing a research organ­isa­tion with the task of solv­ing their prob­lem. After the com­ple­tion of such a research pro­ject, the res­ults are widely dis­trib­uted. You will find pro­ject examples illus­trat­ing the broad vari­ety of Col­lect­ive Research in our Suc­cess Stor­ies.

Applic­a­tion and Funding

The part­ners in a pro­ject sub­mit one com­mon pro­pos­al form in the Eng­lish lan­guage. The pro­pos­al describes the whole inter­na­tion­al pro­ject, which is made up of two or more nation­al sub-pro­jects. The whole pro­pos­al is eval­u­ated in a syn­chron­ised pro­ced­ure by the involved fund­ing agen­cies. After pos­it­ive eval­u­ation, each pro­ject part­ner receives fund­ing from his national/​regional fund­ing scheme. Pro­ject Path

Unbur­eau­crat­ic Support

As famil­i­ar nation­al and region­al fund­ing pro­grammes form the basis of sup­port, col­lab­or­a­tion with inter­na­tion­al part­ners in COR­NET pro­jects is unbur­eau­crat­ic. Per­son­al con­tact between applic­ants and fund­ing agen­cies facil­it­ates advice for pro­pos­al sub­mis­sion and flex­ible solu­tions to prob­lems that might arise dur­ing a project.