Commercialization Clusters of OLAE (COLAE)

Framework: FP7 — Cooperation
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Destination: Alternative Paths to Components and Systems
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Finland,United Kingdom,Belgium,Portugal,Netherlands,United Kingdom,Switzerland,Greece,Austria,Spain,Sweden,France,France,Germany,Germany,Netherlands,Germany
Call:  (FP7-ICT-2011-7, 2011)
Start date: 2011-09-01
End date: 2014-08-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 5177703.0
EU funding (EUR): 3750000.0
Participants: 19
Project status: CLOSED

The main objective of this coordinated action is to promote the commercial exploitation of OLAE (organic and large-area electronics) technology for the benefit of European industry and business and for the welfare of European countries. Through the efforts of COLAE we will be able to provide to European companies effective access to the knowledge base and technology know-how of key European OLAE research partners and their regional OLAE clusters, to high-quality training experiences and courses, to OLAE product and business idea feasibility support, to the best European manufacturing, pilot production facilities and services, to advanced OLAE innovation process and to coordinated support for better IPR landscaping and exploitation as a foundation of European driven business. The established regional OLAE clusters across Europe that have networking stakeholders from research, industry, public and other interested parties, are bought together in a pan European cooperation which will be coordinated through the COLAE project. One important task is to promote the uptake of OLAE technologies by European companies that are new to the field. To achieve this, we will enhance their awareness of the opportunities presented by OLAE and their understanding of the capability of OLAE technologies. We will assist them as they evaluate and verify opportunities and provide a coordinated support service for their needs. We will establish a programme of training, providing basic awareness as well as more advanced technology and entrepreneurship courses with a target of reaching 500 participants mainly from industry. An OLAE feasibility network will be established and verified by executing 10 selected trial cases in which new users of OLAE technology will be assisted as they examine the feasibility of using OLAE technology for particular applications. The OLAE feasibility network is an important step towards the concept of a virtual European OLAE foundry through which OLAE technologies can be developed and manufactured at pilot scale through facilities made available by COLAE clusters. The aim is to achieve a coordinated service portfolio for industry across a broad range of OLAE technologies and applications. An open innovation model will be developed for collaboration and rapid commercialization by regional clusters. The COLAE community will collect information from important future research topics by using open workshops and will bring the recommendations to the attention of the European OLAE community, the EC, Photonics’21 SRA process and OE-A. The impacts of the COLAE project are the growth of OLAE R&D services in Europe, more effective product demonstration and piloting services, the improved coordination of infrastructure investments, the enlargement of the network of OLAE companies and an increase in the number and capability of OLAE technologists and designers.

Keywords: organic and large area electronics,printed electronics,r2r production of electronics,foundry,entrepreneurship,open innovation model,design,clusters of olae,benchmarking of clusters