Meet the community

Bringing such products to market
quickly and at relevant price
points requires the establishment
of a novel industrial value chain
composed of manufacturers of textiles and microelectronics, integrators and assemblers, data processing and IoT experts, manufacturing technology providers, distributors, funding providers and end users.

The SmartX Accelerator will establish a portfolio of up to 40 Trailblazer projects, which will pioneer one or more stages of the novel value chain with a specific focus on critical manufacturing steps. These projects will be selected by an international selection committee of recognized experts in the smart textiles field. The funded projects will be coached along the entire process from project generation to results exploitation
by clusters experts trained in the SmartX Coaching Approach.

Funded projects will mostly tackle 3 high- potential end markets :

1. protective wear incl. sports gear,
2. industrial applications and
3. health care and wellbeing,

markets where Europe has leadership positions. Small and medium-sized companies from across the EU and certain associated countries can apply for the funding through open calls

In addition to the funding and coaching of innovation projects, SmartX will also develop a web based collaboration platform for European smart textiles businesses and experts with a number of self-service and interactive tools.

During the autumn SmartX will organize regional workshops in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden and an IoT hackathon in Berlin to share knowledge and prepare companies for the upcoming call for projects.

The first call for projects is expected to open in November 2019. And two further calls will be launched during 2020.
The SmartX project will run until April 2022 and hopes to establish a blueprint for effective small-scale innovation funding at European level,
using EU programmes such as HORIZON 2020.