Innovation-related issues and Possible Action Points

EDUCATION: Preserving & enhancing knowledge & skills

• Analysing the status of education provision, current industry needs and expected future trends across all relevant consumer goods sectors

• Promoting multidisciplinary higher education programmes including material, manufacturing, design and management components

• Improving the collaboration between industry and education providers across Europe and promoting mobility of researcher across Europe and across the industry-academia divide

• Preservation and generational transfer of unique highly specialised design and manufacturing skills covering an extremely diversified material, product and market spectrum across all consumer goods sectors

• Promotion of the use of advanced IT and web-based tools for knowledge preservation and structuring and flexible education provision

OPERATIONAL FRAMEWORK: Regulation, standardisation & best practises

• Identifying knowledge and tools for ensuring full compliance of consumer goods with evolving environmental, consumer health and safety and other regulation

• Promoting best practices in crucial innovation-related areas for consumer goods such as IPR protection, advanced IT adoption, innovation clustering and networking, consumer communication and information

• Identifying emerging or unmet standardisation needs resulting from material or technology innovations, new regulatory requirements or emerging market trends 

FINANCE: Access to research and innovation funding incl. fiscal measures

• Identifying and categorising relevant public RDI funding sources relevant for consumer goods

• Setting-up support structures and activities to facilitate access to funding for the consumer goods industrial and academic research community

• Identifying best practises and promoting stronger use of indirect support measures such as fiscal incentives, guarantees etc.

• Analysing the situation of private sector funding through seed, venture capital and various debt-based funding sources including EIB-related schemes