VALORISATION OF EU PROJECTS

Valorisation is a term that includes dissemination and exploitation activities. The overall objective of valorisation is to promote the project and its results and foster their use by different individuals and organisations, with the attempt of continuously spreading and improving the usage and the content of the results. Valorisation involves: 1. Testing and dissemination of the results of the project; 2. The exploitation of the results and their development in new context and environments; 3. Mainstreaming or addressing the decision-makers in order to convince them the value of the project outputs; 4. Sustainable application of the results over time in formal and informal systems, in the practices of organisations as well as in the personal learning goals of every individual.

Many European and other projects seem to be missing a good valorisation strategy. Projects seem to be carried out in isolation, and finish without essential impact. In addition, there is a lack of skills for carrying out valorisation actions.

Dissemination Skills

• Ability to understand the concepts of broad and deep dissemination;
• Ability to analyse and define target groups and re-distributor partnerships for broad and deep dissemination activities;
• Ability to plan and organize broad and deep dissemination activities such as conferences and workshops to create critical mass of interest;
• Ability to set up distribution networks across Europe and worldwide for the facilitation of broad and deep dissemination activities;
• Ability to design marketing materials targeted at broad and deep dissemination;
• Ability to understand the significance of developing an appropriate dissemination strategy depending on the results at hand
• Ability to develop and implement a dissemination plan;
• Ability to evaluate and measure the degree of strategy fulfilment, the success and performance of dissemination of results.

 Exploitation Skills

• Ability to distinguish between quality and value expectations by different stakeholders;
• Ability to understand different models and classification of value depending on project complexity and impact on stakeholders;
• Ability to understand that sustainability forms an integral part of any project plan;
• Ability to understand the differences between short term, middle term and long term sustainability strategies for continuity of value returns to stakeholders;
• Ability to identify necessary behavioural characteristics (such as continuity of effort, maintenance and adaptability) of the project participants and context factors for successful and measurable dissemination;
• Ability to set up a sustainability measure plan to ensure the outcomes promotion even after then end of the project;
• Ability to know how the horizontal and vertical mainstreaming is implemented;
• Ability to build and implement an efficient mainstreaming strategy;
• Ability to evaluate the mainstreaming performance and efficiency;
• Ability to understand the concept of exploitation and the differences between exploitation and dissemination;
• Awareness of the critical success factors and criteria for a successful exploitation of project results;
• Ability to plan and implement a compete project exploitation strategy.