Proposals they should:

• identify areas and activities of cooperation, to improve the efficiency and performance of Europe’s innovation ecosystems, fostering their interconnection and scale-up while tackling EU, national, regional and/or local challenges;
• plan their long-term commitment: the applicants are encouraged to consider planning commitments of at least five (5) years, towards engaging in the joint cooperation activities;
• explain the potential for growth and competitiveness foreseen in the targeted sector and/or expected impact in EU challenge(s) through the proposed cooperation;
• ensure inclusiveness and diversity with the involvement of all innovation actors applicants, enhance complementarities of EU, national and/or regional funds and programmes and encourage the alignment of their innovation agendas;
• provide a justification on the need for those joint activities that should be scalable at European level and demonstrate their strong EU added value;
• explain how the proposed action plans complement and reinforce their national and/or regional and/or local innovation plans, policies and/or strategies in synergy, including with their smart specialisation strategies;
• explain the process that they plan to follow, with an open, clear, realistic and impact-oriented approach, including relevant guidance mechanisms and tools;
• present what common knowledge assets are expected from the proposed action plans, and the benefit of the intended beneficiaries of the plans.

The proposals for the development of a joint long-term action plan may include the following two (2) phases:

1. To foster close dialogue among key stakeholders for strategy/partnership building, mapping and analysis of existing national and/or regional and/or local innovation agendas/strategies/policies/plans/activities, the relevant active/inactive actors (including financial actors and citizens) and ways to motivate their inclusiveness, identification of areas of competitive advantage for sustainable economic growth mapping of gaps, needs and opportunities.
2. To the concretising, setting up and finalising the joint action plan(s) and allocation of the activities over a period of the proposed action plans.