Proposals should demonstrate the following expected outcomes:

• Sound understanding of the competences and skills needs of Technology Infrastructures related to effective management and providing services to industry in all member states;
• Improved and structure the training of Technology Infrastructures staff members with improved sector-agnostic competencies;
• Increased and improved collaboration between Research and Technology Infrastructures, leading to exchange of best practices in management and capacity building in Technology Infrastructures, and peer learning;
• Better uptake of technology infrastructure services by industry, including startups and scaleups, innovators and researchers;
• Improved coherence, visibility and accessibility of technology infrastructures facilities and services;
• Improved business and governance models of Technology Infrastructures.

Scope:

A combination of factors including rapid technological advancements, inefficient strategic planning, skills gaps, and budget limitations can create sub-optimal technology infrastructure management. Proposals are expected to develop and provide schemes to attract management talent (including but not limited to organisational sciences) to technology infrastructures in EU member states. These management talent schemes should be aimed at attracting talents that will study the technology infrastructures needs, in terms of competencies, skills, organizations, and business models, to deliver more efficiently their services to industry, especially to SMEs, startups and scaleups. Based on this sound understanding of Technology Infrastructures needs, the attracted management talents are expected to both develop and provide advice to Technology Infrastructures senior management and trainings to their staff members aimed at increasing their capacity to develop and provide services to industry. The developed trainings should be sector-agnostic, open-source, accessible remotely, easy to update, and take stock of other existing similar initiatives and experiences in Research and Technology Infrastructures.

Proposals should propose ways to enhance skills and career profiles of technical staff working in technology infrastructures to address evolving needs such as research security, data management, quality assurance, etc., as well as further professionalising the training of managerial and leadership staff in technology infrastructures. They should help also to promote entrepreneurial skills for technology infrastructures staff in training curricula to fully capture the potential of technology infrastructures as centres of deep-tech innovation ecosystem.

Furthermore, proposals should aim to enhance transnational and multisite collaboration among Technology Infrastructures fostering the building of technology infrastructures ecosystems, the sharing of experience, resources, and best practices in management and capacity building, staff exchange and networking. These collaborations could lay the foundations of a future framework to facilitate coordination of technology infrastructures policy and priority setting at EU level as well as exchange of experience and good practices. Proposals may also benefit, especially for communication and dissemination activities, from sharing best practices and taking stock of what other relevant projects are developing in the field of Technology Infrastructures. Existing specific best management practices and European frameworks in the technology fields considered by the proposals have to be taken into account.