Impact - 2.2 Measure to maximise impact: Dissemination and Exploitation

This chapter is divided to two sections:

1. Dissemination and exploitation of results
2. Communication activities

There's often some overlap between between dissemination, exploitation and communication, especially for close-to-market projects.

Dissemination means sharing research results with potential users - peers in the research field, industry, other commercial players and policymakers. By sharing your research results with the rest of the scientific community, you are contributing to the progress of science in general.

Whereas exploitation is the use of results for commercial purposes or in public policymaking.

Communication is the activities you do during the project lifetime to promote your project and its results.

Instructions

For the dissemination and exploitation of project results, a dissemination plan is a mandatory component of the proposal.

The plan should show how the measures proposed there help to achieve the expected impact of the project.  The plan should be proportionate to the scale of the project and should contain measures to be implemented both during and after the end of the project.

Especially important for innovation actions is that you describe a credible path to deliver these innovations to the market.

Think of the following questions when you draft your dissemination plan:

• In what area do you expect to make an impact?
• What needs might be solved/met thanks to the results of your project?
• What outputs will be created?
• Where will the outputs be made available during and after the project?
• Who are the potential users of your results?
• How will you contact them?

You should include an itemised list of the key results and how you plan to disseminate and exploit these. You can include tables that list your dissemination actions and the Key Performance Indicators. Also estimate the impact of your dissemination activities. Where possible, identify the specific channels by e.g. event or journal name. Make sure these are in line with the objectives in Section 1.1 and expected outcomes in Section 1.4. You can even refer and cross reference these sections.

You can also identify what each partner’s responsibility is. Write a paragraph for each partner that identifies what is their result, who they target, and how. This is especially important for the exploitation of project results. This can be tabulated as well.

In an Innovation Action you can include a business plan, where relevant.

If you do research in the project, include information on how the participants will manage the  research data generated or collected during the project. Identify what data is collected, how will it be shared to other researchers, and how is it curated.  Refer to Open Access publishing.

Example

The main focus of this dissemination plan is to maximize the impact of the project by ensuring proper communication and dissemination of the project results and subsequently to raise awareness to the scientific and  industrial communities, as well as the general public.

Objectives:

• Ensure proper communication and dissemination of the project results.
• Raise awareness to the scientific, industrial, and general-public communities.
• Create and publish scientific contributions.
• Foster research network building with external initiatives.
• Participate in appropriate European and worldwide events.
• Showcase project results.
• Prepare the way for a successful commercial exploitation of the project outcomes.

A table of WIDGET key results and the preliminary exploitation strategy:

Each WIDGET partner has an individual exploitation plan. These are:

Dissemination actions and the Key Performance Indicators of WIDGET project:

Data management and sharing

The WIDGET project will acquire data from several sources, e.g.user feedback and IoT sensors. The acquired data will have different data types and characteristics.

The operation of the system is constrained by the legal system it operates in. For privacy GDPR is the most relevant. Throughout the implementation GDPR’s “privacy by design and default” principle will be used. The details and scope of the necessary data protection measures will be implemented here, including anonymization and pseudonymization requirements.

Research data will be made available so it is findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR). A data management plan will be created during the first project month that outlines the publication method of research data and identifies the data the plan applies to.