Innovating alone is not always easy. Collaboration between public research organisations and businesses enables the participating entities to exchange and share knowledge. It provides the partners with an opportunity to benefit from each other's experience, know-how and expertise. It allows participants to draw on existing competences or technologies to pursue their objectives. 

This kind of cooperation also helps to associate knowledge with business expertise and to adapt it to a market need. It thus enables all partners to achieve tangible results faster and more reliably. 

A range of support mechanisms has been designed to stimulate and sustain such collaborations. 

Identifying potential partners in Luxembourg

The Finding partners section of this portal outlines the activities, competences, resources (equipment, products and services) and some of the current collaborative projects of public research institutes and innovative companies in Luxembourg which you may wish to approach with cooperation proposals.

Obtaining financial support for collaborative projects

Several measures encourage the exchange of expertise and information:

• financial assistance for the implementation of projects in companies by PhD or post-doc researchers is available from AFR-PPP, the public-private partnership strand of the National Research Fund's AFR Scheme (Aides à la Formation Recherche / research training support).
• an access to expertise is possible by making use of technical feasibility studies or by making use of external services in order to initiate and support innovation activities.
• small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can cooperate with a qualified researcher through a measure supporting the secondment of highly qualified personnel.
• the funding intensity for collaborative R&D projects involving partners from the public sector and the private sector can be increased for the businesses involved.

Companies and private institutes planning to host researchers from third countries to implement research projects or to benefit from the research training support scheme (AFR Grant Scheme - Aides à la Formation-Recherche) must obtain an accreditation from the Ministry of the Economy and Foreign Trade as a private research organisation.

Participating in platforms dedicated to common interests

Clusters group businesses and research organisations which focus on specific areas of activity.

The aid scheme for support to innovation clusters promotes the sharing of research equipment and infrastructure and supports the animation of the cluster.

Developing synergies at European level

Various European networks and programmes can facilitate access to technology and help to initiate cooperations: 

• several European networks aim to promote technology offers and networking (EEN, COST)
• the European research programmes stimulate cooperation throughout Europe