Altfinator Parliament working breakfast has been postponed until further notice due to the Covid-19.
The event was planned to be hosted by MEP Caroline Nagtegaal, a member of the EP Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and EP rapporteur responsible for a file on “Markets in financial instruments: crowdfunding service providers”.
Innovative SMEs and start-ups access to Alternative Finance (AF) instruments are being promoted by the European Commission throughout last years, and regulatory developments at the EU level on alternative finance, and particularly on crowdfunding, have been worked on at the European Parliament.
During the breakfast, attendees will have the opportunity to know first-hand the added value of the new European Crowdfunding regulation for the crowdfunding industry in Europe, the recent AF market developments and trends in the European Union, and recommendations from the Altfinator project to increase AF capacity in Europe.
Attendance will include Members of the European Parliament, representatives from the European Commission services, representatives from the Crowdfunding industry and multipliers (industry associations for SMEs; SME support organisations, information intermediaries-start-up hubs, accelerators, incubators-, business advisors, etc.), and Altfinator consortium members.
MEP Caroline Nagtegaal, Oliver Gajda (CEO, European Crowdfunding Network) and Gabor Vicze (Innomine) will present the initiatives conducted at the EP to boost a European crowdfunding ecosystem, its market development, and trends, and the Altfinator white paper conclusions to further stimulate AF capacity in Europe.
The breakfast will end with an open debate among participants moderated by Ronald Kleverlaan (Director, Crowdfundinghub).

To support the local alternative finance ecosystem in countries, Altfinator has developed the Altfinator Hub model. Already in several countries in Europe, local partners have adopted the Altfinator Hub in their own country. These partners are startup/SMEs support networks that are able to distribute and translate the training materials from Altfinator and adapt them to the local cultural situation.
The Hubs facilitate webinars and workshops, provide open-access tools and training materials and facilitate the collaboration between banks, startups and SME associations, policy makers and regulatory agencies to stimulate the alternative finance network in each country.
The individual national Hubs are working together in a European network of hubs, sharing best practices on building and supporting an alternative finance ecosystem and share their insights through peer-learning.
At this moment we have partners and national Altfinator Hubs in Slovakia, Lithuania, and The Netherlands, and we are negotiation with organisations from Estonia, Hungary, Spain, and Portugal.
For the case of Slovakian Hub, we are pleased to announce that BIC Bratislava (Business & Innovation Centre) agreed to undertake the role of the Altfinator Hub in Slovakia. The organisation currently acts also in the following capacities:
Coordinator of the Enterprise Europe Network representation in Slovakia
SME NCP – National Contact Point: Horizon 2020 “Innovation in SMEs”
Access to Finance NCP – National Contact Point: Horizon 2020 “Access to risk finance”
Since 1991, when the Business and Innovation Centre Bratislava was founded, the activities have focused primarily on supporting innovation, technology transfer and business development. Its services include business and innovation advice, support international cooperation, consultation within access to finance, as well as support for the EU framework programmes for research, development, and innovation as well as in the field of protecting intellectual property or finding potential business partners. Most of the activities are focused on SMEs with innovative potential and on developing their products or technologies.
“We are very much interested in and benefit from carrying on promoting alternative finance opportunities with the support of the materials, networks and event methodologies introduced with Altfinator. We are in daily contact with companies searching for innovation funding. It will help us to further improve the access of innovative SMEs to alternative forms of financing”, said Ivan Filus, the Senior Consultant at BIC Bratislava who is also the Advisory Board Member of the project.
If you know any organisations that may be also interested in becoming a national partner? Let them know they can contact the Altfinator coordinator through info@altfinator.eu.
For more information about national Altfinator Hubs, check https://www.altfinator.eu/hubs

The Best Practice initiative and certificates were created by credit providers and intermediaries collectively in order to enhance and emphasize the relevance of good practices and business ethics in the sector. The process of giving out certificates and approving applications is organized by a dedicated commission called to live at FinanceEstonia.
“Different from the crowdfunding sector, credit providers and intermediaries are highly regulated and inspected. By being transparent and participative while following the existing requirements, credit providers can help to improve the reputation and trustworthiness of the sector,” says Katri Tomson, Senior Associate at Law Firm TRINITI and the current leader of the Best Practice Commission.
Following (or not following) the principles needs to be presented at the credit providers’ websites. To acquire the certificate, the applicant needs to submit a report to the Best Practice Commission where the credit provider is asked to explain how they uptake the Best Practice principles as well as what they plan for the future.
FinanceEstonia is a public-private cluster initiative with the aim of establishing Estonia as a vibrant and innovative location for financial services. Their membership is open to corporates, financial institutions and professional advisors wishing to use Estonia as a base for domestic and international business.
The best practice developed for creditors and credit intermediaries can be found in English at financeestonia.eu HERE.

The 2nd edition of the MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) on Alternative Finance, which could be accessed absolutely free of charge here has achieved huge success with nearly 400 subscribers.
The course introduces the key models and approaches related to raising finance from sources alternative to bank lending (crowdfunding, invoice trading, venture capital, business angels, fintech platforms), addressing these topics both at a basic and advanced level.
The course counted on the participation of providers of alternative finance and professional investors as well as entrepreneurs, startuppers and policymakers, who wanted to learn more on these new financing channels available for startups and SMEs.
More than 80% of the participants came from Southern and Eastern European countries, such as Italy, Lithuania, Spain, and Ukraine, where the market of Alternative Finance still needs the transfer and adopt best practices for further growth. This was one of the specific objectives of this second edition, which we were able to reach. Moreover, female participation reached nearly 40%, which could be considered an excellent result given the low incidence of female professionals in the target audience of the MOOC.

Samsung’s mobile wallet Samsung Pay has, until now, struggled with moderate support from the UK’s high street banks, with only HSBC, The Coop, Nationwide and Santander signed up… until now.

Curve, the all-in-one bank card, fresh off its edgy rebrand, announced this morning that it was adding support for its card to be added to Samsung Pay.

What this means is that, indirectly, all the Visa and Mastercards supported by Curvecan now be used through Samsung Pay.

“It’s fantastic that Samsung customers will be able to take advantage of all the features of Curve, and we are happy to invite customers of more banks to the Samsung platform,” said Diego Rivas, Curve’s Head of Product

It’s a curious implementation of Curve’s technology, putting banks with no direct relationship with Samsung in the position of supporting Samsung Pay, reminiscent of Curve’s forays with American Express over the years.

Samsung Pay users who take advantage of Curve’s offering to add, say their ‘officially’ unsupported Halifax or Barclayscard to Samsung Pay, will also take advantage of Curve’s existing feature-set—1% instant CurveCash at certain retailers, Go-Back-In-Time to switch card payments, and cheap FX rates.

Curvealso said this morning that the launch was a key part of its roadmap as it gears up to scale “throughout Europe and into the US in 2020”.

In July Curveclosed a $55m Series B funding round at a $250m valuation, and in September Curvebroke its crowdfunding target by raising £6m in an oversubscribed Crowdcubecampaign.

This story is brought to you courtesy of the Altfinator Project in which Pedal is a partner.

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) aims to foster intimate linkages between science, technology and innovation to address the so-called grand societal challenges. These include health, food security, clean energy, sustainable transport, climate change, inclusive societies, freedom and security of Europe and its citizens. RRI has a role to play in ensuring the intricate entanglements of “science and society” in the making.

RRI invites us to deliberate fundamental questions related to what kind of futures we want science, technology and innovation to bring into the world. The Norwegian experience of integrating RRI in some of the major national research funding programmes indicates the importance of changing current research and institutional practices to ensure a societally responsible weaving of the research and innovation fabric.

The challenge of addressing Grand Challenges, as explored in a 2014 report by Stefan Kuhlmann and Arie Rip for ERIAB, reviewed current approaches, structures and practices in relation to tackling these grand challenges. It argues that the grand challenges not solely resides “out there” in society for the science, technology and innovation community to “address.” This indicates that we should not simply take research and innovation as a means to address societal challenges. Instead, we should invert this approach and make research and innovation an object of inquiry in its own right.

Following this evolution of our thinking, we might consider RRI as a wake-up call to a reality where science, technology and innovation are always already embedded in society and vice versa. As such, RRI invites a new attempt to mitigate the asymmetry that Jerry Ravetz articulated as follows in 1975: “Science takes credit for penicillin, while Society takes the blame for the Bomb.”

Responsible Research and Innovation experiments
I have closely followed RRI experiments and I strongly value related discussions at the Research Council of Norway (RCN). In this context, solving the grand societal challenges implies examining the research and innovation system itself.

This approach requires developing competencies and skills and creating suitable diagnostic and prospective capacities. Because basic understandings and diagnoses frame the issues at stake in solving grand challenges, they need to be made more explicit. They also need to have been discussed as an integral part of research, innovation as well as policy-making.

Currently, developing skills and capacities regarding what is referred to as “second-order reflexivity” tops RCN’s RRI agenda. This requirement was already clearly outlined in the 2009 expert-report by the European Commission entitled Challenging Futures of Science in Society. Reflexivity requires what the report calls “further skills” as researchers, as well as policy-makers, must enhance their ability to provide meta-knowledge “about premises, conditions of validity, uncertainties, areas of ignorance, values and conditions of applicability to certain contexts” in research and innovation.

The RRI framework of the Research Council of Norway thus support the development of skills that are required to open up the research and innovation processes. And to recognise the limits of our own knowledge and competence. It also supports the involvement of stakeholders and various publics to help in dealing with the potential effects of research and innovation processes.

Governance of complexity
The new strategy of the Research Council of Norway, entitled Research for Innovation and Sustainability 2015–2020, is geared towards greater societal responsibility than before. It focuses on research and innovation activities that are likely to yield benefits for society at large in the long term. It also foster solutions that help in addressing the societal grand challenges.

The RRI framework was developed in parallel with the main strategy by the large scale technology programmes; namely the Research Programme on Biotechnology for Innovation (BIOTEK2021), the Research Programme on Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (NANO2021), the Initiative for ICT and digital innovation (IKTPLUSS) and the Programme on Responsible Innovation and Corporate Social Responsibility (SAMANSVAR).

The framework was inspired by international developments; in particular, the emerging RRI policy by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in the UK. The RCN programmes conducted several RRI experiments while building their RRI ambitions. These stretch goals were later set down in the RRI framework. They not only formulate expectations for the research organisations receiving funding but also for the programmes themselves, as responsible societal actors.

Governance in complexity
The large scale technology programmes driving RCN’s RRI-engagement, did not happen by chance. Indeed, research, technology development and innovation entail more than uncovering truth or charting out new and improved maps. These are activities that can, potentially–and often directly–change the landscape in which we live. We are not merely “reading” nature. Increasingly, we are “rewriting” it as well, as Jack Stilgoe explains in his 2015 book Experiment Earth.

RCN’s RRI framework designates a key role to governance, as does many other framings of RRI that have emerged in recent years. At the same time, the understanding of governance changes as a result of the distribution of responsibility for governance in dynamic and heterogeneous networks. Governance in complexity seems a wiser strategy than attempt at governance of complexity.

Here, the framework points to resources that emerge from the work on Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA) in the Netherlands, including ‘responsible development’ and ‘transition management “”)’, as well as the 2015 European Commission expert report on RRI indicators for promoting and monitoring Responsible Research and Innovation.

Out of our comfort zone
Today, we are pursuing our RRI experiments in tandem with Digital Life Norway, among others. Ongoing discussions point to question whether we need a version 2.0 of the RRI framework.

This new version would include a new dimension of the RRI approach, called “transition.” It is based on bringing together multiple perspectives and multiple experimental approaches to make the RRI transition sustainable. This notion would be included to the key aspects included in version 1.0 already covering ‘anticipatory’, ‘reflexive’, ‘inclusive’ and ‘responsive’ research and innovation processes. Our collaboration with the newly formed Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC) provides the background and motivation to include the dimension of “transition” towards RRI.

RCN’s experiments indicate that RRI is not respecting the traditional boundaries between research, innovation and politics. In discussions amongst researchers following Brexit, we have heard calls for more RRI activism. Some find it rather unsettling, individually–they feel this new order threatens their professional identities. From an institutional perspective, RRI entails not respecting the established divisions of labour.

To others, the RRI wake-up call rings so loud that it even disturbs our received notion of excellence in research. The 2014 Rome Declaration on Responsible Research and Innovation in Europe, gave a revised definition of what excellence in research means through the lenses of RRI: “excellence today is about more than ground-breaking discoveries, it includes openness, responsibility and the co-production of knowledge.”

This suggests a change of direction from ‘outreach’–working to convince the public about the value of research and innovation– towards ‘inreach‘–presenting expectations about learning and development to ourselves and to the peers in the research and innovation communities. Some of us are, by now, far outside of our comfort zone.

This article is brought to you courtesy of the HubIT project in which Pedal Consulting is a partner.

The event took place between 25-27 of November 2019 in Bratislava, Slovakia

The event was attended by 35 competing participants who were divided into 8 working teams (made up of 4 – 5 members each), coming both from the ICT and SSH, well mixed in each working group, while they worked on projects and/or products related to inclusiveness in one of the 4 proposed areas: 1. better access to education / online learning for disadvantaged groups; 2. solving daily hurdles faced by the migrants or victims of human trafficking in the hosting country; 3. combatting fake news, hoaxes, ‘deep fake’ and spreading of disinformation; 4. internet, machine learning or artificial intelligence: “How to ensure that humans will have the last say?”.

Every team was couched, and their products/projects evaluated by experts and judges, coming mostly from ICT vs. SSH and/or business sector. The jury members received a preparation kit to be followed before the event took place. There were four winning teams designated by the jury, receiving an opportunity to take part in a traineeship at LOBA, get professional support and consultancy in scope of Tenderio project, Qualification for the HubIT Common Ground Camp, and a special laptop bag made of waste material following the concept “waste-to-best”.

Participants were very active during the 2-days Designathon aiming for development of their inclusive products/projects. Organizing staff prepared a social event for the first evening of the Designathon and icebreaker sessions to make people more comfortable and know each other better for the purposes of smooth teamwork. The participants were provided a quite exhaustive introduction to the project, concept of RRI and also to the methodology of the Designathon, its agenda and task they are expected to fulfil. Additionally, they were also delivered a presentation on successful pitching. Based on all these inputs and the support provided by the organizing team members, the groups worked in a work-supportive, inspirational and relaxed ambient during the whole Designathon.

Finally, participants got feedback on their products/projects from organizing team members and experts, leaving them space to further elaborate on these and keep in touch with their fellows in scope of the team they worked in.

The event was oriented to increase the cooperation between information and communications technology (ICT) and researchers, people from the fields of social sciences and humanities (SSH). And as the special attention of HubIT is to Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) assessment and its six dimensions – Public engagement, Gender equality, Science education/communication, Open access/Open science, Ethics and Social inclusion, Governance, Social justice and Sustainability – the following text will also reflect on these criteria in terms of their incorporation to the Designathon as such and also on the projects and/or product developed during the Designathon during this event, having many of these criteria included by default.

Main outputs created by the participants working in groups at the Designathon:
Simplifying recruitment with Al.

The tool to be developed is an Al-based HR tool to simplify recruitment. Ethical Al approach which provides access to the detailed and non-biased information. The candidate who decides to apply for a job, uploads the video and Al-based analysis create solution for the employer. It presents fast and efficient tool for recruitment which combines social sciences and ICT and it also creates the space for equal opportunities.

E-inclusion: social e-learning approaches.

These are didactic concepts to foster social e-learning for successful learning in case of disadvantaged target groups. This way ICT plays an important role in building social capital and in facilitating learning processes for vulnerable groups.

The future is inclusive for refugees

The tool offered is covering potential intervention areas for better integration of refugees in the area of language literacy (online courses), labour market (training programmes for jobseekers), housing (identification of rental apartments, or financial support), health and psychological support, support with social integration, reception and first steps into foreign country.

Fake news

Fake news understood as a campaign for generation and promotion of manufactured information, which involves a strategy, a budget and an ideology, directed against an individual or a community can be overcame by the support structure of social platforms allowing the capitalization of the rational response. Such solutions the participants came up with during the event too.

The whole workshop was in very good atmosphere with a very high level of organisation. It was considered as a great platform to meet and discuss with experts. Interdisciplinary cooperation between SSH and ICT and the responsibility of ICT has a strong potential and events like this has to be inevitable for future development in this area.

Pedal is a partner in the HubIT project.

In the context of the HubIT project (H2020), the first ICT MakerLab was organised in Berlin on 21-23 February 2020. This event aimed at bringing together experts from the fields of SSH and ICT to create concrete digital products with social added value and reflect on the ethical aspects of digital activities.

In total, 19 participants from 6 countries took part in the event. Participants were divided into 5 interdisciplinary teams, which competed during 2,5 days in designing and building ICT prototypes that aimed to raise awareness on or address social issues. The teams could rely on several infrastructures available on site (3D printers, laser cutter, etc….) and were coached by a technical team. They also partook in a self-assessment session where they reflected and discussed in group about their work division and the ethical aspects of their product. Finally, they pitched their ideas to 3 professional experts & judges and had the possibility to showcase their products to the participants during a small maker fair. The winning team from the project called “Mummy’s little income shrinker” developed a weighing machine displaying the evolution of the gender pay gap depending on the number of children a woman has.

This event was the first MakerLab of the working package entitled “practical collaborative events” and under the responsibility of nexus. Further events that aim to bring social scientists and ICT experts to work together on responsible innovations are going to take place on 27-29 March 2020 in Berlin (registrations are open here) and in Budapest in May 2020.

Pedal Consulting is a partner in the HubIT project.

There are many ingenious and innovative ideas for creating bio-based products coming from different sectors, that have the potential for improving the collaboration between actors in the bioeconomy. In this scenario, stimulating the consumers perception and acceptability towards bio-based products, can have a direct impact on incrementing the offer of such products from the brands, and consequently increasing the demand of bio-based resources from the industry.

To support countries where bio-based business sector is less mature or not developed, like the case of Slovakia that imports more bio-based products than is using rather than developing its local resources, the following recommendations have been identified.

Universities around Europe and the world could contribute to the awareness of the importance of bio-based products by holding more educational lectures, including not only students but also the wide public.
To contribute to a wider exposure, bio-based sector should put more effort into communication which could represent “louder” advertisements in media, especially by focusing on success stories and examples of real bio-based products out there, outlining that they are in line with sustainability, environmental and climate goals.
Recognising the environmental values associated with bio-based products can also be supported by standardised certification, so that people can easily recognise bio-based products.
There are several bioeconomy strategies at different levels European, national and in some cases also regional, but there is a lack in concrete implementation plans of these strategies. The development of a common bioeconomy narrative could effectively support this process.
There is a general need to help SMEs to overcome operational stress and a capacity shortage with respect to innovation as well as a stronger integration into emerging transnational and global value chains, what would also be supported by enhancing a better level of dialogue and cooperation among all the actors in the quadruple helix.
All the ideas and recommendations for boosting bio-based economy presented above are widely discussed in several documents developed by Biobridges project, which summarise the outputs collected from several co-creation workshops all around Europe.

Access to these documents below:

Recommendations to enhance collaboration among industry, brand owners and consumers (CLICK HERE)
Proceedings from EU, national and regional co-creation events and policy debates (CLICK HERE)
This article is brought to you courtesy of the Biobridges project in which Pedal Consulting is a partner.

Author: Robert Miskuf (PEDAL Consulting)

The beginnings of the company
Biopolis was founded in Valencia, Spain as a spin−off company of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), together with three industrial partners: CAPSA, Talde Private Equity and Naturex España S.A.
The founder (Dr. Ramón) had worked at CSIC for 23 years. He was Professor at the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology of CSIC and coordinator of the Food Science and Technology CSIC area. They were very good at publishing and participating in European projects, but they had a very low score of technology transfer to the sector. A new paradigm was needed, where scientists had contact with industry. With that purpose, CSIC boosted the foundation of Biopolis. Today, the company is 90% ADM and 10% CSIC.

Facing the challenges: Innovation transfer, networking, legislation and harmonization
The challenges detected for the company were:

Innovation transfer: The biggest challenge for Biopolis was the lack of an enabling business environment for innovation and technology transfer. There were not structures or political leaders boosting the creation of such environment.
Collaboration, networking and knowledge exchange: despite being a spin-off of a public company, it was difficult to find proper partners to develop the business and attract investments (funding, incentives and investors).
Legislation stability, harmonisation and labeling, standards and certification: The company has found barriers in the legislation regarding the quality of the production plant and the process of bio-based products. They dedicated a lot of time, money and effort to learn how to adapt to the legislation (self-training). For instance, they certified all their products with the highest quality certification, as it is better to exceed rather than than falling short of quality standards.
Feedstock: They haven´t had any difficulties with the feedstock availability because they are their own producers, and their client is responsible of the transportation cost.
The solution: business model, growth and funding strategy
In 2003, Biopolis board of directors conducted a study of the Spanish biotechnology industry, which concluded that many Biotech companies were sustained fundamentally by autonomic public funds. According to Daniel Ramón, the founders were forbidden to seek for public funds and received €56.000, with the condition that in 2 years they must earn profits.
The founders visited food, chemical and pharma companies, offering them their services. In 2 years, they made profit and in 5 years they had enough to create the “Lifesequencing” division.
According to Daniel Ramón “our philosophy is to always put the client first. This has not changed with ADM acquisition”. He also explained that it was not easy to find the first clients. They rented a car and visited several companies with the following offer: “Hello, we know how to do R&D, how can we help you?”. But most of the companies refused to give them a chance to prove themselves.
However, things changed when they arrived at Ordesa, an infant nutrition company of Barcelona, and met Montse Rivero (who was at that time, the scientific director).
“She trusted us. I have asked her many times why and she always says that she saw such curiosity and passion in us, that she was touched by us”, said Daniel. Since then, more clients arrived, and in 2 years Biopolis was achieving profits.

Conclusion with three recommendation for other companies who are starting:
Know your entities of reference be proactive, speak with such entities and learn about their journey in the business. After that, you will have to knock many doors before entering in the first one, which will be, obviously, the most difficult. Try to keep at least 2-3 clients that cover most of the activities of the company, which can support you in different situations.
Emulate success cases happening in other countries, such as The Netherlands and their matured technology transfer system or USA and their open regulation, where you can ask for advice before delivering anything.
Know your market and consumers (in their case it is stratified like this): early adopters characterised by being a small market of consumers who like being surprised, and can be considered the drivers of the future whom are willing to pay more; Selective market represented by senior people interested in special products; and low income market comprised by elderly lean towards cheap products things.
This story is brought to you courtesy of the Biobridges project in which Pedal Consulting is a partner.

Online

10:30 – 11:30 (CET)

Altfinator aims at stimulating alternative finance instruments (other than bank finance) among innovative SMEs.
Reward-based crowdfunding involves individuals contributing comparatively small amounts of money to business projects in return for some kind of reward, which often is a production version of the crowdfunded product. Reward crowdfunding helps business projects not only to raise finance but to test market acceptance before launching new products, and it is a powerful marketing tool that is being progressively used by small and large firms too.
Guest speakers:
Jonàs Sala, co-founder of the professional reward crowdfunding online platform Verkami will present what are the benefits for SMEs of this type of finance, what might be the risks and how they are mitigated, and how it works in practice.
Clara Guasch, Chief Communication Officer of the innovative SMEs Cocorintim will tell its successful experience in raising finance through reward crowdfunding, how/why they decided to use this financing instrument? How did they get to succeed in the finance raising campaign? What should be considered by other SMEs when raising this type of finance?
The webinar will end with a ‘questions & answers’ session.
Pedal is a partner in the Altfinator project.
REGISTER in this LINK

Understand the key success factors of Alternative Finance providers and best practices applied in the following benchmark countries: UK, USA, Estonia, The Netherlands.

Download the report HERE.

These best practices are brought to you courtesy of the Altfinator project whose mandate is to facilitate the transfer of best practices from more advanced to less advanced markets through designing, developing and implementing a capacity-building strategy for the financial ecosystem and its participants in South, Central and Eastern European countries to improve the provision and absorption of Alternative Financing.

Pedal is a partner in the Altfinator project.