The PITCCH Network announces the 3rd Call for Corporate Challenges

The PITCCH project is running its 3rd call for Corporate Challenges. PITCCH aims to create a pan-European Open Innovation network to facilitate the establishment of structured collaborations between Big Corporations as technology seekers and SMEs/start-ups as technology providers. PITCCH gathers innovation challenges from Big Corporations and scouts potential solutions from SMEs and Startups. It has already selected and published 12 Corporate Challenges under two prior cut-offs and is expecting to select and publish an additional 5 under this 3rd cut-off. In the network, Technology Centres can act as intermediaries between companies to ease the delivery of solutions and innovations to solve the Challenges. 

Big corporations are now welcome to submit their Corporate Challenges on the PITCCH Open Innovation Platform A Corporate Challenge is a technological request to develop or improve a product, process or service. The Challenge proposal shall be relevant to one or more of the European priority areas and global challenges and be seeking solutions based on advanced technologies. Furthermore, we are looking for Challenges that require novel solutions not available on the market yet, hence involving some research activities, and that are not yet part of a Big Corporation’s existing R&D programme with other partners.  

The PITCCH consortium will facilitate the process of finding the best solution providers from across Europe and enable Big Corporations to choose the finalists for the PITCCH Day when selected SMEs and start-ups will have the opportunity to pitch their solutions in front of the Big Corporations. Qualified Technology Centres can also contribute to these open innovation projects by offering their services. 

The financial support includes a €5k from the PITCCH consortium to the selected SME and a minimum €5k to be committed by the Big Corporations, at the time of the Challenge publication, as an award for the SME to cover its activities’ costs or the access to specialised services from technology centres. The higher financial award can be proposed by the Big Corporations at their own discretion. 

The deadline for the submission of the Challenge is on the 14th of February 2022. Please visit the PITCCH Open Innovation Platform to submit your challenge: www.innovation.pitcch.eu and the selected Challenges will be published and launched on the Platform at the beginning of March 2022.

About PITCCH

The PITCCH project aims to increase the competitiveness of European industries by building a Pan-European Open Innovation Network where technology centres act as intermediaries to facilitate the establishment of structured collaborations between big corporations as technology seekers with small and medium-sized enterprises as technology providers and this way accelerate the market uptake of advanced technologies through different sectors.