What is ATTRACT?
Why is there no European Google or Amazon? Why have some of Europe’s hottest start-ups, such as Sweden’s Spotify, moved to Silicon Valley? It is not for lack of great technology or breakthrough science. It is because the mechanism for scaling up promising ventures to global markets is simply not working.
Many technologies leading to breakthrough innovations with a big impact on people’s lives stem from fundamental research. ATTRACT is a pioneering initiative bringing together Europe’s fundamental research and industrial communities to lead the next generation of detection and imaging technologies.
For the first time, a consortium of big research organisations – that build and operate telescopes, particle accelerators and other capital-intensive scientific instruments – will be explicitly leveraged to capture value and create jobs and growth. For this, ATTRACT will enlist large companies, experienced venture capitalists, and individual investors alike. The aim is to create an entirely new, European model of Open Innovation that can become an engine for jobs and prosperity for all.
Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, the project aims to help revamp Europe’s economy and improve people’s lives by creating products, services, companies and jobs.
We were awarded 125.000 € to conduct our project called NEXTGEN-TECH-ED Educating the next generation of tech entrepreneurs: Science-based Entrepreneurship Education as a means for university-industry technology transfer