System innovation experimentation for Industry 5.0 (IA)

Proposals are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• Demonstrated successful incentives for systemic transformation towards Industry 5.0^[1] and for skills upgrading and boosting the competitiveness of EU industries.
• Development and application of Industry 5.0 enabling conditions, processes and methods for systemic transformation, organisational learning capacities and revitalisation of industries at regional/local level.
• Demonstrate / provide evidence on the implementation of Industry 5.0 innovations for better adaptation of industries to new challenges linked to twin transition (enhanced resilience), organisational agility, and contribute to tackling the skills gap / attraction of best talent in regional industrial ecosystems

Industry 5.0 is a framework grounded in system thinking approach which aims to bolster the economic and environmental resilience of industrial ecosystems and companies and contribute to enhancing the sustainable competitiveness of EU industries.^[2] Industry 5.0 innovations such as human-centric technologies or learning organisation models contribute to tackling the new emerging challenges linked to ongoing green and digital transition such as addressing the skills gap, attracting the best talent or accelerating uptake of clean technologies.^[3]

Proposals should elaborate on an Industry 5.0-driven methodology framework via system innovation experimentation in different industrial ecosystems in European Regional Innovation Valleys and other regions, to support deployment of Industry 5.0 innovations or methods at regional / local industrial ecosystems level:

a) offer innovative approaches to accelerate industrial transformation at regional/local level while tackling the new emerging challenges such as skills gap or attracting the best talent.

b) experiment to develop incentives towards longer-term industry 5.0 transformation.

The project should build on the results of the “Community of Practice on Industry 5.0”^[4] and other Horizon Europe Industry 5.0 (or related) funded projects. Proposals should involve appropriate expertise in Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), in particular in systems thinking or complexity science and their practical implementation as part of system innovation or transformation initiatives.

The proposal should include details on processes to identify a concrete long-term transformative innovation challenge for the industrial ecosystems or actors participating, to formulate concrete objectives addressing systemic issues related to how the industrial ecosystem could boost its future competitiveness, and achieve Industry 5.0 goals, and in particular focused on attracting skilled employees, creating the conditions for learning ecosystems or learning organisations. The challenge should guide the next steps on industrial transformation processes and experimentation.

For each of the identified transformation challenge, the project should engage stakeholders in transdisciplinary research and innovation activities, including in:

a) Identifying and testing new Industry 5.0 driven methods and measures for organisational transformation, learning organisation implementation and system innovation, to support the scaling up of Industry 5.0 and skills for competitive and future-oriented industry transformation:

• Identifying the package of systemic innovations available to reach the set goals, including advanced technologies designed with responsible practices (human-centric, ecological, bio-inspired, biomimicry, nature-based solutions etc.), business models, new work processes, organisational models, governance or social innovations that can support Industry 5.0 transformation.
• Assessing skills needs and learning areas for the workforce and organisations in the industrial innovation ecosystem, in view of the identified systemic innovations.
• Identifying the incentives, leverage points and / or behavioural aspects that would support the organisations’ evolution to industry 5.0, building on existing results of Industry 5.0 funded projects and connected initiatives.
• Identifying successful methodologies to develop systemic innovation incentives to promote Industry 5.0 paradigm change, human-centric enabling technologies, learning organisation model adoption and skills upgrade for Industry 5.0 goals.

b) Developing and testing the new methodologies through sandboxes, open innovation approaches or participatory processes for systemic transformation by prototyping new incentives schemes or enabling measures. The sandboxes should involve quadruple or quintuple helix stakeholders at regional/local level to support the achievement of the identified transformational challenge and contribute to acceleration of place-based industrial transformation:

c) Develop tools/measures to build evidence on and promote the impact of Industry 5.0 methods for industrial transformation at regional/local level, such as:

• Digital or AI-enabled tools to support rapid conversion and orchestration of information that can support decision-making and anticipation of the pipelines of innovations, value chain evolution, skills needs or transformation opportunities.
• Peer learning across the supported ecosystems, focused on the improvement of organisational learning capacity, learning ecosystems development and new innovation capacity for Industry 5.0 transformation, inspired by new paradigms in organisational design, learning and innovation. This should also include actions catalysing leadership for Industry 5.0 paradigm change. Document the results to inform and advise policy-makers in view of their potential upscaling.

Proposals submitted under this topic should include an exploitation strategy.

The project should build on or seek collaboration with existing projects developing Industry 5.0 solutions and/complementary to Industry 5.0 pillars and methods such as Regional Innovation Valleys or New European Bauhaus. It should also develop synergies and ensure complementarities with other relevant European, national or regional initiatives, funding programmes and platforms, such as Digital Innovation Hubs, European Partnerships like Made in Europe, Process4Planet, AI, Data and Robotics Partnership and the relevant EIT KICs.

The Commission considers that proposals in this topic with an overall duration of typically 36 months would allow these outcomes to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other durations.

[1] Industry 5.0 - European Commission (europa.eu)

[2] European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, Renda, A., Schwaag Serger, S., Tataj, D. et al., Industry 5.0, a transformative vision for Europe – Governing systemic transformations towards a sustainable industry, Publications Office of the European Union, 2021, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2777/17322

[3] European Commission: Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, ERA industrial technologies roadmap on human-centric research and innovation for the manufacturing sector, Publications Office of the European Union, 2024, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2777/0266

[4] Industry 5.0 Community of Practice | Futurium