CELTIC-NEXT Services Portofolio

Xavier Priem
Director CELTIC Office

Operating CELTIC-NEXT as an EUREKA ECP Cluster means that the Office delivers an extensive portfolio of services to our ICT Community and to the EUREKA Network of National Funding and Innovation Agencies.

CELTIC-NEXT’s project calls:

The operation of a CELTIC NEXT call for bottom-up project proposals involves several specific actions:

The first action is to prepare for the call – this means preparing the support for the management of the calls and proposals in terms of Office human resources and system tools, from application preparation to evaluation and labelling. This includes:

Once the systems are prepared, the online or physical events for the call must be orchestrated:

  • Launch event (online) – how and what to propose
  • Brokerage event (physical or hybrid) – presentation of public authorities funding, proposers pitches and consortia participants matchmaking

The office staff facilitates these events by offering pitching preparation support before the event and running Consortium Building Sessions in the days following the brokerage and matchmaking.

The office must also allocate a set of qualified experts for the technical assessment of proposals. Should a proposal be labelled, its participants can expect help from the office for the negotiation with the different Public Authorities and coordination of preparation activities up to the project launch.

CELTIC-NEXT’s Flagships

These involve a similar process to the Project construction, but it is initiated in response to the convergence of industry demands and national interests.

CELTIC-NEXT’s Promotion Events

CELTIC-NEXT showcase events are planned, wherever possible, to maximise the exposure and value to the projects and the authorities. These are usually planned in coordination with other major events to ensure good audiences and to control costs.

CELTIC-NEXT’s Support to Projects:

CELTIC-NEXT oversees the running projects to ensure they are working to plan and can deliver the expected results. This is achieved by frequent interactions between the project officer and the project leader and several formal reviews (mid-term, final) during the project life.

Typically, a CELTIC-NEXT project can expect:

  • Comprehensive support for reporting, dissemination and collaborative working through the CELTIC-NEXT tool set
  • Assistance, coaching and monitoring support from the Project officer
  • Advice and guidance from experts and project officers during the project’s lifecycle (on demand) and in particular at review times (by default)
  • Simple processes for Project Change Request management, providing flexibility and resiliency to projects when plans need to change

CELTIC-NEXT provides also support for Dissemination activities to the project by inviting them to present at CELTIC-NEXT’s Events, nominating speakers and participations at international events like EUCNC, EGIS,… and highlighting the major achievement of the projects via CELTIC-NEXT’s media channels: LinkedIn, Newsletter, CELTIC News…


Figure 1: CELTIC-NEXT Tools Set

The number of calls per year and regularity

The CELTIC-NEXT community, in consultation with the national authorities have decided that their dynamic domain is best served by having two opportunities in the calendar year to present their project ideas for consideration. Accordingly, two bottom-up calls are organised each year, one in Spring (deadline end of April) and one in Autumn (deadline end of October). For these calls. proposers are free to define their project ambitions according to their ICT research interests and can submit them via our Online Project Portal.

In addition to bottom-up calls, CELTIC offers the opportunity to generate “Flagship” projects/calls at any time if there is an agreed interest. These special interest initiatives can emerge if the industry and PAs share a strong interest in collaborating on a Special Flagship initiative to address a key theme. The CELTIC office will facilitate the flagship by having an agreed submission date, which can differ from the above schedule by specific agreement with the involved PAs, and organising the review and project preparation process around this. These projects are usually in the range of several tens of million Euros for a 3–5-year duration.

Flagship projects are, by their nature, very successful because they are a balance of bottom-up and top-down approaches.

It is important to mention that CELTIC-NEXT operates exclusively thanks to the fees it collects from projects that got labelled and started. This is the only revenue source enabling all the aforementioned services. CELTIC-NEXT Office neither receives public funding from EUREKA Countries nor private money from its Core Group.


Figure 2: CELTIC-NEXT Calls Timeline