D2.4 – Recommendations on Knowledge Exploitation

This report, D2.4, presents recommendations on knowledge exploitation for future use by NATI00NS itself, the SOILL project, the Mission Soil Secretariat, and any other entities engaged insupporting the creation of living labs for better adaptation of guidance and support to applicants.
The NATI00NS project is supporting the EU Mission "A Soil Deal for Europe" (Mission Soil) across national communities. NATI00NS act as a messenger for the Mission Soil through multiple activities:

•  Raising awareness nationally and regionally on the Mission Soil objectives and specifically on
  the aim and support for establishing living labs;
• Providing access to capacity-building materials;
•  Addressing how living lab setups may focus on regional soil needs within the Mission Soil
  objectives;
• Fostering matchmaking for living lab clusters.

Besides the above, NATI00NS supports the Mission Soil by empowering stakeholders in 43 Member States and Associated Countries to apply for the Horizon Europe soil health living lab topics 2023
and 2024. This is done by assistance through National engagement events, national mentors, coaching, an online matchmaking platform, webinars, thematic events, thematic factsheets, and an engaging and dynamic website.
A set of recommendations are presented on knowledge exploitation for future use in the creation of living labs and for future call texts. The recommendations provide suggestions and inspiration for well- functioning engagement events and capacity building for the creation of future living labs and call texts. The recommendations are in parts divided into a) general characteristics, b) considerations on call proposal procedures, and c) considerations of financial characteristics.
The report is based on lessons learned that have been extracted from D3.2 ‘Review of National engagement events, round #1’ and from D4.1 ‘Evaluation of Coaching and Capacity building, round #1’, as well as from feedback from project partners and applicants engaged in activities by means of two consortium workshops and an applicant survey. The workshops and survey have been used to compare and contrast the evaluations from the perspective of task leaders of 3.2 (WP3) and 4.2 (WP4) and from the perspective of partners and actual and potential applicants of the first call.
There is positive feedback on all priorities. However, there is a strong request from both applicants and from consortium members for more information such as more opportunities for knowledge sharing and collaboration, guidelines and insight on what it takes to establish a living Lab and how to run it, how to handle the process of writing the proposal and how to handle financial requirements, and finally request for post-event workshops, continuous engagement and guidance.
Comparing and contrasting the evaluations, findings show that there is a fair balance between what consortium members have prioritized as necessary improvements and the requests from applicants who have been through the application procedure. It is seen that applicants prioritize further support and guidance in relation to application procedure and financial factors, which are prerequisites for writing an application and having the opportunity to getting started with the establishment of a Living Lab in the first place.
The recommendations will be further fine-tuned and improved after the wave of the second call engagement events and proposal writing procedures in the second year of NATI00NS.
The NATI00Ns website will be a repository of the created knowledge during the project. Overall management of the knowledge will be transferred as a first step to the SOILL-Startup project that will make the materials available through the SOILL hub, the one-stop-shop collaborative platform for soil health living labs, lighthouses, and applicant organisations.