Deadline: 01-Oct-20
The Innovation Fund Denmark (IFD) has launched an open call on Social Sciences and Humanities.
The objective with this call is to invest in research-based projects within social sciences and humanities, involving partnerships from public and private institutions (universities, municipalities, schools, hospitals, companies, NGO´s, consultancy, unions, etc.) that contribute to solutions to major societal challenges globally and in Denmark.
Social sciences and humanities are crucial to understanding the way people, local communities, whole societies, and enterprises behave, communicate, make decisions, and interact with each other. They know that behavior relates to, e.g., traditions, habits, values, beliefs, economic incentives, and physical space. Thus, social sciences and humanities, alone or in interaction with other scientific disciplines as engineering and natural sciences, have a great potential to finding concrete solutions to major societal challenges.
The call aims for projects that can prove genuine impact and where the qualified knowledge base is verified in practice, as it is IFD’s role to invest in projects that can achieve a broader societal impact. Innovation Fund Denmark encourages partnerships that with an outset in social and humanities research involve public and private entities; that complement each other’s expertise and that will help implement the project’s results.
Funding Information
- Budget for this call: DKK 30 mill.
Eligibility Criteria
- Partnerships from the public to private institutions, including the potential involvement of relevant international partners.
- Innovation Fund Denmark wishes to invest in projects that contribute to the creation of valuable knowledge and solutions to major societal challenges globally and in Denmark.
How does IFD choose the projects it will invest in?
They assess applications on the following four main criteria:
- Quality of research and innovation: Innovation Fund Denmark is looking for cutting-edge ideas with a high level of research and innovation that offer solutions to relevant and specific needs. The research and innovation excellence is assessed in terms of originality, state-of-the-art, and combination of new methods. Furthermore, they focus on the partner composition and inclusion of relevant competencies and qualifications that together contribute to the idea, solution, and value creation of the project, including the potential involvement of relevant international partners.
- Value creation during and after the project period: Value creation is understood in broad terms, among others, as targeted innovation activities that solve major societal challenges. Examples are reduced costs for the society, reduced environmental –or resource footprints, improved quality of life, optimized processes, increased revenue from domestic sales or exports, etc. It is important that the application makes probable an estimated and expected value creation of the project in terms of quantitative and/or qualitative measures, based on expected launch or implementation into the society, even if this happens after the investment period.
- The efficiency of project execution: The application has to have an operational project plan where the project is organized in work packages. They need to understand how the project will come to life, and which steps it will follow. The project has to show deliverables, milestones, and stop/go criteria, which will help following and/or adjusting steps along with the project. A good project has a team composition that matches the project´s objectives. Innovation Fund Denmark considers diversity in the projects team as a resource; greater diversity helps to bring the performance on measures such as innovation, collaboration, and critical thinking to a higher level. They encourage partnerships that go from public to private and other entities that complement each other’s expertise. Ideally, the main beneficiaries of the project are part of the team.
- Implementation of results: A good application describes how the project results are implemented into society, even if this is after the investment period. They want to know who will use, invest in, or own/manage the project outcome once the investment from Innovation Fund Denmark has ended.
It is important to note that Innovation Fund Denmark does not invest in pure research or data gathering projects with no specification of a concrete implementation plan.
For more information, visit https://innovationsfonden.dk/en/programmes/grand-solutions/open-call-within-social-sciences-and-humanities
