The Working Group CoIE:

• created labelling criteria with an application procedure.
• Three CoIEs have been labelled: EICOSE (2011), ProcessIT.EU (2011) and ES4IB (2011). The labels of EICOSE and ProcessIT.EU are still valid.
• CoIE ProcessIT.EU issued a second edition of the ProcessIT.EU roadmap in 2018.
• Chaired by Jerker Delsing

How it all started

In 2011 the Steering Board of the ARTEMIS Industry Association decided to issue an ARTEMIS label for those Centres of Innovation Excellence (CoIEs) that fulfil a set of criteria that are important for the ARTEMIS and broader community. A CoIE is a group of multi-country, multi-organisation, interconnected R&D actors and businesses that achieves a significant advantage in innovation success through efficient planning, acting and cooperation. CoIEs exist mainly to create new, self-sustaining businesses, which in turn drive employment, social responsiveness, etc. The Working Group focuses on enhancing CoIEs, the labelling process and potential new CoIEs with a view to future needs and opportunities. The Chair of the WG CoIE is Jerker Delsing.

Accomplishments so far

Three CoIE labels have been issued:

• EICOSE (European Institute for Complex Safety Critical Systems Engineering), a virtual institute that leverages three recognised national initiatives onto a European dimension: Aerospace Valley, System@tic Paris-Region and SafeTRANS. EICOSE was awarded the title of ARTEMIS Innovation Cluster on Transportation, the first institute to receive this title.
• ProcessIT.EU, whose focus is on automation solutions primarily for the process industry in a number of European industry segments: Pulp & paper, Metals, Mining & minerals, Oil & gas, Chemicals, Energy & power, Pharmaceutical, Food processing and Infrastructure.
• ES4IB, a vital focal area related to the innovation chain in ICT for intelligent buildings and aiming to boost Europe’s leadership in ICT-enabled energy efficiency through intelligent solutions and support Europe’s objective to reduce energy consumption by 20% by 2020 and facilitate broad use of ICT systems to enable future buildings to become at least energy neutral.

New CoIEs

As far as is known, no new CoIEs are in the proposal pipeline at the moment. However, there is clearly a desire to cover a broader range of applications than is currently the case. Such domains might include security and health. This would prove enormously beneficial to both industry and society, so if European players are encouraged to link up with ARTEMIS in these directions, everyone will benefit. The impact of the prospective ECSEL partnership could also help to broaden the scope.

Benefits

CoIEs are also important in terms of contributing to the ARTEMIS Strategic Research Agenda, on which they exert an influence on the direction and the content of the ARTEMIS programme. The CoIEs also have an important role to play in profiling the work of the ARTEMIS programme and projects – it is the ‘excellence’ factor that garnishes support from not only the industry partners but also from the public authorities around Europe and, ultimately, the citizens themselves as end users, consumers and beneficiaries of the innovation. The ARTEMIS community itself derives more benefit from the activities of CoIEs due to this profiling and access to such centres. Of course, they serve to align the different actors and stakeholders as well as the interests of individual countries and national programmes, helping to resolve one of the main objectives cited at the start of the ARTEMIS Joint Undertaking – to address industry fragmentation.

Future

While the Working Group is pleased with the three CoIEs so far, a point on its agenda for 2014 is to look at ways in which more can be done to encourage more groups around Europe to apply for an ARTEMIS CoIE label. The WG wants to expand the scope. An overview of the items for 2014:

Spring 2014

• Revalidation of EICOSE, ProcessIT.EU, ES4B
• Identify existing regional clusters in ES
• Pre-analysis of potential as CoIE

Autumn 2014

• Contact promising candidates and promote their labelling as Artemis CoIE
• Activation of 2-4 CoIE candidates
• Support on CoIE labelling for 2-4 interested candidates
• Support candidates by guest invitation to WG SRA
• Support candidates on project consortia formation for ECSEL 2015 Call