ECLIPSE

What is the ECLIPSE community for?
 

1. Sharing and Defining Challenges: Public procurers are encouraged to share their functional needs with the ECLIPSE community. This is the first step in defining a "challenge" to the market, where procurers express their requirements without dictating the specific solutions, allowing for a broader range of innovative ideas.
2. Facilitating Dialogue: The community serves as a hub for open dialogue between public procurers, startups, investors, and other stakeholders. By discussing needs, existing solutions, and potential collaborations, the community helps identify innovative solutions that address public interests. This dialogue is vital in shaping the challenges and making them attractive and clear to potential solution providers.
3. Input for Tender Preparation: Before moving to the tender phase, public procurers can gather valuable input from the community. This helps in refining the challenge and ensuring it's well-informed by market capabilities and investor interests. The goal is to make the tender as effective as possible in attracting quality submissions.
4. Training Enhancement: Through the community, public procurers and AGID practitioners can access teh training modules derived from the ECLIPSE NAVIGATOR toolbox. This training aims to enhance their capacity to describe challenges accurately and in a way that stimulates innovative responses.
5. Promoting the Tender: Once AGID releases a tender, it is posted on the EQ platform within the ECLIPSE community. This ensures that the tender gains visibility among a targeted audience of startups and SMEs that are part of the community and might have the innovative solutions sought.
6. Startup Engagement: Startups registered on the EQ platform can be matched with the tender's criteria, allowing them to apply proactively. This matching process is facilitated by the community's infrastructure, which aims to connect the right solution providers with the relevant challenges.
7. Risk Assessment: The community gathers tools like the SRLS assessment to help startups address potential future risks associated with their solutions. This proactive approach to risk management is part of the community's support structure for innovation.
8. Events for Pitching Solutions: Selected startups are given opportunities to pitch their solutions at events such as "Get in the Ring," which are organized within the community framework and promoted on the platform. These events provide a platform for startups to present their ideas in front of investors and ECLIPSE partners, fostering investment and partnership opportunities.
    

Overall, the ECLIPSE community is designed to be an integral part of the innovation procurement process, connecting public procurers with a vibrant ecosystem of innovators, investors, and other relevant stakeholders. It aims to streamline the procurement process, encourage the development of innovative solutions, and ultimately lead to the implementation of those solutions in a way that benefits the public sector and the broader society.