BOOSTING INNOVATION BETWEEN SPACE AND NON-SPACE SECTORS: THE BUSINESS CASE OF SPACEUP PROJECT

摘要

The European society and economy can benefit from the integration of space technologies and applications that provide effective solutions to big societal challenges and strengthen synergies between public and private activities. Therefore, a strong business ecosystem able to cover all the phases of a successful space venture value chain is needed. In this light, ten European partners, with different backgrounds but a common interest in opening the traditional space sector into the "new space", have joined forces. Their objective is to assist space-related start-ups in scaling up and becoming leaders in enabling and industrial technologies. The SpaceUp project fits into the European Union strategy to reinforce the space sector and related industries and is part of the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 under work programme COMPET 7 - Technology transfer and business generators. This is where SpaceUp comes from: a project that aims at fostering the European space sector, by supporting research, innovation, entrepreneurship across all Member States, and enabling start-ups to seize larger shares of global market. Indeed, the SpaceUp approach is twofold. Firstly, it wants to create a model for a stronger, competitive and ambitious space start-ups ecosystem, also supporting the transfer of space technologies to other sectors. Secondly, it will test a replicable methodology to boost the growth of space ventures based on the organisation of 6 Space Academies over the full duration of the project. Space Academies are a two days event of support activities where start-ups receive customised and extensive services (incl. training, networking, investors meeting etc.). This paper presents the preliminary analysis of the approach proposed by SpaceUp and it will report on the first set of results coming from the organisation of the first Space Academy, including best practices to be further developed and possible problems encountered.