Matching innovations & ideas at EIT Manufacturing’s MatchMaking Event 2021

More than 180 innovative project ideas competed about the attention of more than 500 participants at EIT Manufacturing’s MatchMaking Event 2021. The pitches were covering critical challenges such as how to reduce environmental footprint and promote circular economy, digital collaboration solutions, human & machine coworking, flexible manufacturing and more. The objective of the MatchMaking event was to help build the teams and ideas ahead of the 2022 Call for Proposals.

“EIT Manufacturing, as a European Innovation Community, supporting transformation towards the digital economy and the circular economy, is on the quest for high impact project ideas!” – Klaus Beetz, EIT Manufacturing CEO.

Objective: Matching the right project idea with the right partners

More than 500 participants joined in the third Matchmaking Event 2021, which took place during the last week of February. The virtual event has received very good feedback, with the objective to help build and prepare projects and teams ahead of the 2022 Call for Proposals, which is now open.

With almost a month to submit EIT Manufacturing Innovation, Business Creation, Education and RIS project proposals for 2022, participants used this opportunity to find the best partners join the team and help complete project plans before submission. Throughout the course of the event, more than 160 projects presented their innovation ideas on stage, around 50 meetings with partners were organised and 100 conversations held in the Networking sessions.

A total of 182 pitches are still available to the participants on Wide Ideas collaboration platform where teams are now invited to continue to view, comment, and discuss ideas and establish the partnerships ahead of the Call for Proposals.

As a next step, the teams are expected to send their first proposals no later than March 22. After this, they will receive some feedback ahead of the final submissions, which will close in May.