COPILOT

The COPILOT project aims to implement a sustainable scale-up support framework to support the EU bioeconomy’s capacity building, and thus stimulate innovation and accelerate the growth of bioeconomy innovators. Key objectives include:

• Develop a sustainable platform based on Pilots4U knowledge and co-create dynamics to enhance the availability and accessibility of open-access infrastructures.
• Engage, connect, and stimulate open access to EU bioeconomy infrastructures to strengthen the European scale-up ecosystem. This includes both providing engagement and financial support to pilot and demo infrastructures to facilitate their involvement in COPILOT activities, as well as participating in networking and matchmaking activities to deliver services, competences, and value to innovators.
• Scope, engage, connect, and stimulate innovators through scale-up training, webinars, pilot visits, and networking opportunities to unlock their potential for developing disruptive bio-based technologies and products.  
• Engage scale-up stakeholders (innovators, infrastructures, enablers) and empower leaders, while also building a framework to boost the scale-up community and foster its growth.
• Establish an autonomous and self-sustainable platform beyond the project’s duration through a tested business model and reinforced by a robust onboarded community. 

By uniting all bioeconomy innovators, COPILOT will enhance the scientific and technological capabilities necessary to fully harness the EU's potential for bio-based industrial activities. COPILOT's contributions include:

• Accelerating research and development, as well as scaling up innovative climate-neutral, circular, and sustainable bio-based technologies, processes, and products, thereby facilitating access and driving innovations across industrial sectors.  
• Fostering cross-disciplinary collaborations among innovator actors, addressing challenges in the bioeconomy sector and benefitting from diverse expertise.
• Generating valuable data and insights about scale-up capacity in Europe through open science procedures, influencing market trends, policy decisions, research directions, and business strategies, while also enhancing technological scale-up knowledge and sharing sustainable practices, methodologies, and insights across sectors.
• Accelerating the business growth, investments, and job creation of the European bioeconomy sectors by facilitating the access of bioeconomy innovators to scale-up facilities, aiming to achieve a minimum 40% increase in gross value added per person employed in the bioeconomy sector.
• Boosting entrepreneurship by improving networking opportunities and open access to Europe-wide infrastructures, leading to the emergence and scale-up of bioeconomy start-ups and spin-offs and thereby driving economic growth and job creation.
• Untapping the potential of underrepresented bioeconomy strategies at national and regional levels, boosting local and regional ones, with an impact in 25% of underrepresented regions and countries.
• Supporting the development of bioeconomy projects that are environmentally friendly, socially inclusive, and economically viable.
• Creating awareness and transmitting the value that the different bioeconomy sectors bring to the EU, limiting exports, and reducing the consumption of fossil-based products.