- The new programme combines Catalonia’s scientific productivity with the expertise of the Catalan Institute of Finances
- Catalonia’s scientific productivity accounts for only 1.5% of the European population yet it attains 3.4% of European Research Council (ERC) grants and 2.4%
The Government of Catalonia takes one step further in its commitment to transfer technology and knowledge to the world of business and one of the more important tasks it has in terms of social and economic development is transferring results found in research to a more productive setting.
To achieve this, the Government of Catalonia has created the Industry of Knowledge programme (programa Indústria del Coneixement), aimed at scientific projects with potential to enter their respective markets as well as aiding university and research centre spin offs at various stages of development:
- In the initial stage of the project, (Seed Stage), 40 subventions of 25,000 euros each will be given annually to protect investigation results with patents and will also cover the initial development stages of the product
- For the second stage (Product Stage), the Government of Catalonia will give out 15 annual subventions worth 100,000 euros with the aim to develop prototypes and to demonstrate viability of the projects
- In the final phase (Market Stage), the Catalan Institute of Finances will award 20 grants a year, 15 of which could reach up to 67,000 euros per project and the remaining 5 could reach up to 200,000 euros
Within five years, the program is expected to provide 30 million euros whilst assisting more than 300 initiatives with potential to enter the market.
The Catalan Government strategy to transfer knowledge.
Along with the Industry of Knowledge programme, the Catalan Government is implementing various measures to ease the transfer of results attained from research to the market.
Among some of these measures are:
- The Industrial Doctorate Plan, which has the objective of training doctors working in companies. The plan already consists of 70 projects working in 58 companies and 10 universities and there has been a recent announcement calling for another 75 projects for the year 2014
- On the legislative front there is a measure to provide a tax deduction on autonomic income tax
- A 6.1 million euro allocation for public universities incentives to sign new agreements with private companies and a 1.5 million per year provision to encourage them to create private companies of their own (spin-offs) and attain revenue for licenses and patents
- New funds for entrepreneurship and management training for PhD students of the FI program.
In sum, measures put into place to strengthen industry and promote research throughout the country.