Innovation needs resources

The state of North Rhine-Westphalia supports those willing to innovate with a number of funding opportunities.

As a state bank, NRW.Bank provides a selection of financing access for founders and companies as well as private individuals and public actors. These are particularly aimed at supporting digitalization and innovation projects and thus strengthening the innovation capacity of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

There are also a number of other instruments that are aimed particularly at those who want to start a business in the country. The 'New Wilhelminian Era' initiative provides a good overview of this.

The middle class is the economic engine of the country. Therefore, MWIKE programs such as Mittelstand Innovativ & Digital (MID) strengthen small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular in digitizing the innovative strength of their companies.

be supported by the European Regional Development Fund ( ERDF NRW This fund aims, among other things, to advance innovations, research and technological developments as well as digitalization.

The cluster voucher is a support option for clusters and networks to further develop project ideas. The aim of the support is to bring projects to a new level, explore funding opportunities and find suitable project partners. Interested clusters and networks can express their interest using the form for the cluster voucher, which consists of a maximum of six consulting days. Project ideas can be submitted at any time and the voucher can be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis.

There are also various options for financing innovation at the federal level.

The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK) offers a wide range of options to support innovation in Germany through innovation-friendly framework conditions and market-oriented funding programs.

Various funding programs from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) also offer the opportunity to support innovation projects in the early phases of research and development.

The following funding opportunities should be explicitly mentioned at the federal level:

• Excellence measure “go-cluster: Excellently networked!” of the BMWK as a program for the professionalization of cluster management organizations;
• The “IGP – Innovation Program for Business Models and Pioneering Solutions” funding program is a BMWK program. The focus is on ideas that improve educational opportunities or help enable or
• “EXIST – start-ups from science” funding program as a BMWK instrument to promote start-ups from universities and non-university research institutions;
• “KMU-innovativ” funding program of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) to support industrial research and pre-competitive development projects of small and medium-sized companies;
• BMWK’s “ZIM – Central Innovation Program for SMEs” funding program
• SPRIN-D Challenges are innovation competitions announced by the Federal Agency for Advanced Innovations in which successful teams are financed quickly and unbureaucratically in order to produce solutions for major social and technological challenges.

Finally, there are further funding opportunities at EU level.

Funding at the European level is particularly characterized by the Green New Deal and is implemented primarily through the European Structural and Investment Funds (see above) and the Horizon Europe framework program. With a budget of 95.5 billion euros, this is one of the world's largest funding programs for research and innovation. It aims to build a knowledge and innovation-based society and is divided into three pillars: “Excellent research”, “Global challenges and competitiveness of European industry” and “Innovative Europe”.

In addition, there are also funding opportunities for clusters and networks at the EU level, in particular through the European Cluster Collaboration Platform (ECCP), which acts as a central contact point for cluster actors at the European level and aims to network clusters with each other.

The European Secretariat for Cluster Analysis (ESCA) also promotes the excellence of clusters and their management. As a central contact point, the ESCA awards three different quality seals (gold, silver, bronze) to qualified clusters and networks as part of the ECEI.