ACHIEVE Executive Summary
European Coaching Innovation Standard
FP6-022375-ACHIEVE
A project of the INNOVA initiative

The TEEE-Inn project of the Innovation program has developed since 2002 a method and associated tools for coaching innovative start-ups, and has demonstrated the benefits of using these in a concerted manner between incubators of five European regions. The Technology Transfer Accelerator project of EIF assesses the feasibility of a new type of investment vehicle focused on financing the commercialisation of the results of research.

Today, the results of these two projects are regarded by key innovation and finance actors as a breakthrough to be deployed in Europe to facilitate the accelerated access of innovative start-ups to early-stage venture capital.

ACHIEVE (formerly called EUCIST) proposes to disseminate these results to European incubators, in the ICT sector, via the Gate 2 Growth and PAXIS networks. Our aim is to increase significantly the number of new innovative start-ups of the ICT sector, and to reduce their failure rate, in all Member States.

Concrete results to be deployed include:

  • Individual support:
  • Small team coaching services: To maximise access to technological clusters, remote markets and investment community, the dissemination will take place into the ICT sector focussing on Software, Telecom and Micro electronics, among candidate regions, not necessarily known for their high potential innovation.

    To motivate incubators to apply for EUCIST, we guarantee a faster access to venture capital for their start-ups.

    At the end of the project, EIF guidelines for financing innovation in the FP7 will be validated, including a mechanism for financing incubators.

    Project participants

    The project will be funded by the Enterprise & Industry DG, Innovation Policy Unit of the European Commission, and will run from December 1, 2005 for 30 months.

    The commercial name of the project is ACHIEVE.

    Other details