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About our communities

EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities: addressing global challenges through partnerships

Our Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) are Europe-wide networks centred around addressing a specific societal challenge from sustainable energy to climate change to healthy food and green transport. They are communities of:

  • Higher education institutions,
  • Research centres,
  • Businesses and investors,
  • Public and non-profit organisations.

Each Community focuses on a specific societal challenge. 

Discover our Knowledge and Innovation Communities 

Once you’ve chosen your focus, our Communities support you every step of the way

By joining our Communities, you’re not just connecting to their network but learning and growing from them. They can help you:

You can find your community by seeking out their local Co-Location Centre or Innovation Hub 

Hubs are where Knowledge and Innovation Community partners cluster for activities, workshops, networking, and more. We have Hubs in every European country and beyond! 

Some Hubs actually specialise in a certain field or might have a special array of partners you might be interested to work with.

Find the EIT Hub you’re most interested to work with through our EIT Ecosystem Map

Each Knowledge and Innovation Community has its unique structure 

They can each choose their legal status, internal organisation, and working methods that best suit their strategic goals. This autonomy helps them adapt and react to new challenges and changing environments across Europe. 

Our funding model ensures our accountability and integrity 

We support each of our Communities through grant agreements. The grant goes directly to activities that: 

  • Develop new, innovative products and services with a view to placing them on the market
  • Support start-ups and other businesses to scale
  • Educate students and equip people with new skills
  • Contribute to build partnerships between higher education, research, and business that foster innovation in Europe
  • Help the Knowledge and Innovation Community operate
  • Help boost Europe’s competitiveness and ability to resolve global issues

The Communities are encouraged and incentivised to generate revenues and leverage funding from outside of the EIT with the ultimate goal of becoming able to sustain their activities independently of the EIT. Such additional funding received by the Community must also clearly contribute to the Community’s strategy and objectives. 

Learn more about our innovation model

In accordance with Article 38 of the EU Financial Regulation 2018, the EIT has the obligation to publish the list of Grants awarded as well as the grant recipients.  You can see the grants that we have allocated below: 

A model geared towards real impact

We regularly monitor and assess the performance of our KICs to better achieve our goals of increasing Europe’s global competitiveness in innovation and addressing global societal issues. 

This ensures that their strategies and activities:

  • are aligned with our objectives and EU policy priorities
  • are integrating a diverse array of organisations and are producing tangible benefits for the European economy and society at large (such as creation of new businesses, sustainable products and services, and jobs)
  • continuously improve in quality and get better at managing risk
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