Development research - a way for EU grants

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For many years now, EU subsidies have been helping Polish entrepreneurs to develop and implement new solutions in their business. There is no doubt that they had a very positive impact on Polish innovativeness and ensured the development of many companies. However, such grants shall not be made for any purpose whatsoever. Entrepreneurs who want to use them must determine exactly what they want to invest in and how they will use the funds allocated to them.

In order to distribute such money, special competitions are organised, usually related to specific topics. The guiding theme of such a competition may be, for example, job creation, which happens particularly often in less developed regions with high unemployment. Very often you can also meet competitions devoted to broadly understood development research - they allow you to gain money necessary to invest in new technologies. An ideal example is the "Intelligent Development" programme, under which the total amount of PLN 3.5 billion is to be allocated to Polish entrepreneurs. Such a large amount of money is to be transferred, above all, to small and medium-sized enterprises, which will be able to invest in research and development and the implementation of new technologies.

The aim of the "Intelligent Development" programme is to support development work and research in industry and services. This concept is, of course, very broad, thanks to which many entrepreneurs can benefit from such co-financing. Generally speaking, development research means all activities aimed at creating new technological solutions and improving their products or services in this respect. As in the case of all other competitions of this type, here too, an entrepreneur wishing to participate in this type of competition must meet a number of basic criteria and requirements. In the application submitted to such a competition, we must describe exactly what the innovativeness of our idea is. The product or service that we intend to implement thanks to such funding must be truly original.

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The funding is intended primarily for entrepreneurs whose ideas bring something completely new and unknown to the market - even at a local level. In addition, the entrepreneur must demonstrate that, in the context of such a development, he is willing to cooperate with various research centres and specialists in the field. When granting co-financing, companies that already conduct such cooperation are often preferred - it shows well that the entrepreneur actually tries to develop his activity. It is essential that the application for funding includes a detailed plan of how we intend to use the funds allocated to us and what research into the implementation of new solutions will look like. The scope of research that we can carry out with EU aid is determined by the rules that apply here. They should be related to areas such as natural resources, waste management, industrial processes, innovative technologies and sustainable energy. All such details can be easily found out when submitting an application.

The co-financing programme is open to all companies, although it is worth remembering that submitting applications may differ slightly depending on the exact type of business we run. In particular, the deadlines for individual entrepreneurs to submit applications differ; first of all, small entrepreneurs have access to it, and then there is the time for larger companies. Participation in such a competition can be an excellent incentive to develop your business, and not only in financial terms. Above all, we have to meet a number of requirements for this purpose, which in itself stimulates us to work on our own business and to continuously improve it. The use of modern technologies and implementation of innovative solutions is nowadays absolutely necessary to run a company efficiently - the development program described here opens up a lot of interesting opportunities for us in this respect.