Knowledge Valorisation and Stakeholder Engagement

The impact of R&I activities addressed by the European Partnerships can be increased tremendously through dedicated dissemination and uptake strategies. Since European Partnerships address grand challenges, the stakeholder community is large and diverse.

“The EU Guiding Principles for Knowledge Valorisation aim to maximise the transformation of research and innovation results into solutions that benefit society” … “Knowledge valorisation is the process of creating social and economic value from knowledge by linking different areas and sectors and by transforming data, know-how and research results into sustainable products, services, solutions and knowledge-based policies that benefit society” (EC, 2024).

For the benefit of better and easier uptake of research results European Partnerships, specific measures for replication and upscaling, alignment of measures with a perspective on national innovation and investment programmes and cross-partnership approaches could contribute to producing useable outputs for stakeholders and applicants. The creation of a common approach to communicate, exchange, and learn with stakeholders, applicants and end-users increases the impact of research and has several key benefits:  

• Clear identification of needs for knowledge, data, infrastructure and expertise of stakeholders and users.
• Increasing societal relevance of the partnerships, closing the research-implementation gap and improving long-term impact.
• Continuous communication and exchange and transfer of knowledge with stakeholders and users builds trust, long-term relationships, and resilience.
• Utilisation and cooperation with existing networks/initiatives/platforms of stakeholders and users to have a wider reach.
• Promoting equality, diversity and inclusion as well as avoiding biases.
• Better tailored and more informed development of dedicated instruments and activities to approach and integrate end-users (e.g., joint calls, research infrastructure, data, etc.).

Knowledge valorisation policies among partnerships may tackle the following areas:

• Strengthening the use of research results and scientific knowledge for designing and implementing public policies and developing and revising standards.
• Developing relevant competencies, skills, and capacities to facilitate cross-fertilization of competencies, cultures, and practices.
• Facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration, including social sciences, humanities, and the arts, and consideration of tacit knowledges.
• Provide measures for businesses, civil society, citizens, end-users, and public authorities to participate in co-creation and joint experimentation.
• Support consolidation of intellectual asset management approaches.
• Promote and support peer learning and sharing of best practices and lessons learned.
• Pool resources, expertise, data and infrastructure across disciplines, countries, and regions to promote more peer-learning practices.
• Adopt common definitions, metrics, and indicators.