OITB

An Open Innovation Test Bed (OITB) is a set of entities, providing common access to physical facilities, capabilities and services required for the development, testing and upscaling of nanotechnology and advanced materials in industrial environments. The objective of the Open Innovation Test Beds is to bring nanotechnologies and advanced materials within the reach of companies and users in order to advance from validation in a laboratory (TRL 4) to prototypes in industrial environments (TRL 7).

Open Access in this context means that any interested user, from Europe and beyond, can access the test beds' facilities, capabilities and services independently of whether this user is part of an Open Innovation Test Beds Horizon 2020 consortium or not. Access should be granted at fair conditions and pricing and with transparent and mutual obligations with regards to, for instance, security, safety and intellectual property rights. Users can be individuals, teams and institutions from academia, research organisations, small and medium enterprises and industry, from the public as well as the private sectors.

Via a Single Entry Point, the users would be offered complete and transparent information about the facilities, capabilities and services provided by the Open Innovation Test Bed.

Open Innovation Test Beds provide common access through one single entry point which will be the main contact for the ecosystem and represents the interface with the users. The single entry point will act as a legal entity, having the power to sign contracts on behalf of the Open Innovation Test Bed and be held accountable for it.

Through the Single entry point of the LightCoce ecosystem customers can send their requests that will be evaluated and priced, based on specific workflows that will be developed after collecting input from the involved group leaders and according to the customers’ requirements. A catalogue of services will be compiled in the form of a library which is alive in the sense that people and organizations can develop material technologies in real-time face-to-face. A Data Management System will be built and all contractual aspects will be managed (NDA, access rights and conditions, IPRs, health and safety issues, etc.) in order to ensure the safe delivery of the results to the customers.

The SEP provides a list of services available and requests will be send through this specially designed platform. Proposals can be submitted at any time but will be periodically collected for scientific evaluation. After submission, the technical feasibility of each research step will be assessed by a Management Board, including representatives from each of the core partners of the project. Feasible proposals will then be evaluated and ranked according to scientific merit. The best-ranked proposals will be assigned to the most appropriate LightCoce pilot lines and services. The manager assigned from the customer company will be notified by LightCoce ecosystem of the results of the technical and scientific evaluation. All users will be asked to accept and undersign the Access Policies set by the ecosystem.