Innovation Management in Research Infrastructure Services for Renewable Energy

To achieve more efficient, competitive and cost-effective energy systems and devices, the project RISEnergy (Research Infrastructure Services for Renewable Energy) wants to create an ecosystem of industry in Europe, research organizations and funding agencies. That aims to develop novel energy technologies and concepts. The project is consisted of a consortium of 69 beneficiaries from 23 countries: vocational education and training institutes, technology institutes, universities and industrial partners, to jointly improve the economic performance of technologies. The purpose is to enable research and innovation to increase energy efficiency and reduce the cost of energy technologies, to foster wider use of renewables into energy systems through proactive innovation management having one entry point to Research Infrastructure providers. We present the inclusion for the first time of Innovation Management in a research infrastructure (RI) services project. The reported work aims to provide support and guidance to technology developers after the product/service has been tested to reach commercial potential and create technological advancements of new technologies, solutions and systems. To maximize the benefit regarding knowledge sharing, improving processes and streamlining to help and de-risk innovative technologies prior to commercialisation. In this paper the planned work to be performed and the expected outcomes of the Innovation Management team will be presented. The aim is to demonstrate the importance of Innovation in RI projects and generate a constantly growing repository of best practices from lessons learnt.