MISSION 3 – Innovation and Technology Transfer

The society and industry of the future will be characterized by increasingly advanced and challenging environments and technologies, in which telecommunications networks will form the backbone of communication and information society, enabling a connection of high quality and stability in any place and at any time. In this scenario, innovation is essential.

Mission 3 of the RESTART program aims to facilitate innovation by creating awareness of new opportunities enabled by innovative technological components and systems in the telecommunications industry. This includes materials, antennas, low-power devices, Open-RAN software modules, integrated fiber-wireless systems, zero-touch systems, spectrum-agile private networks, and more.

Mission 3 has the ambition not only to stimulate the medium-low TRL research in telecommunications, but also to increase the TRL of results generated by the RESTART projects to transfer research achievements into innovations to be exploited in new products and solutions.
At this scope Mission 3 has the ambition to create favorable conditions to allow the researchers involved in the activities within RESTART to be active in technology transfer by proposing their innovations, prototypes, and patents to Industry for their possible exploitation. At the same time, the mission seeks to incentivize national companies and industry leaders to leverage the project results to strengthen their position in international markets.
Collaboration between universities, research centers, and industries will be fostered, considering joint management of exploitable innovations, including intellectual property rights (IPR) and licensing agreements.

In the first fifteen months of activity of Mission 3, the following activities have been carried out by the mission:
  • Mission 3 scope and procedures has been presented by the mission responsible, Ing. Roberto Sabella (Ericsson), to the RESTART community at the kick-off meeting on January 26th /27th
  • It has been established that Mission 3 contributes to quantitative KPIs of the RESTART objectives O3.3/O3.4/O3.5.
  • A seminar on “Intellectual Property Rights and Patents” was held by Mission 3 responsible on 2023, February 15th. The seminar was directed to the overall community of the RESTART program and, particularly, to the PIs.
  • A process in 4 phases (setup, initial inventory, periodic assessment, and “prepare to transfer”) has been established to concretize the value of innovations emerging in structural and focused projects and to maximize the impact of the RESTART program by recognizing exploitable innovations and results as soon as they emerge. The process has been presented to the RESTART plenary in Bari, July 2023.
  • A specific “Innovation Survey” has been prepared, including 8 open questions. The questionnaire is a web-based tool in the hands of Principal Investigators to highlight potentially transferable innovations. The questionnaire is also the means by which Mission 3 aims to uniformly track the innovations emerging from projects leveraging on a dynamic database with periodical updates.
  • More than 20 innovations have been proposed by structural and focused projects.
  • A specific process for facilitating identification of potential receivers and technology transfer has been established and presented to the RESTART community.
  • On November 18th, 2023, Roberto Sabella led a second seminar titled "Protection of Innovations in RESTART". The seminar aimed to explore the opportunities and challenges associated with safeguarding intellectual property within the context of the complex and multifaceted research environment of the RESTART program.
  • On January 30rd and 31st, the Plenary Dissemination Workshop, a public event to present the results obtained during the first year of activity and collegially define future initiatives took place in Bologna. During the event the Mission 3 responsible Roberto Sabella presented the achievements and plans for Mission 3 in a talk titled “Strategy for Innovation and Technology Transfer”.
  • A follow-up on the exploitation opportunities of the the proposed innovations has started in February 2024.
According to Section 2.10 of the RESTART proposal, the following KPIs can be associated to Mission 3. Accorting to milestones, at least one third of KPIs targets shall be fullfilled within 30/06/2025 and 100% target met within the end of RESTART program:
  • KPI3.3: at least 1 innovated product per industrial partner and at least 20 patent filed.
  • KPI3.4: at least 1 EU project proposal (submitted or accepted) per RESTART partner and at least 3 new business lines/units across all industrial partners.
  • KPI3.5: potential of at least 10% energy consumption reduction in at least 3 relevant products or processes.