InnoNext

Project Description

InnoNext strengthens Europe’s entrepreneurial growth by creating a partnership where talents and companies grow together. It reflects the European Commission’s vision for the EIC by helping bridge the gap between science and entrepreneurship, and by connecting researchers and innovators from EU research, training and innovation programmes with innovative SMEs and start-ups. This includes talents from ERC, EIC, MSCA, EIT and Research Infrastructure programmes, as well as companies supported through EIC, EIT, MSCA and related ecosystems. The initiative is built around a mutual growth model: talents gain the opportunity to apply their knowledge in a real entrepreneurial environment, develop an entrepreneurial mindset, and turn research into practical impact; companies gain access to highly skilled profiles who can contribute to a concrete challenge, strengthen innovation capacity, and accelerate the development of products and services. InnoNext makes this possible through innovation internships that are supported throughout the whole process, and in some cases financially supported by the project as well. It also helps identify the right match through AI-based matchmaking process that goes beyond a standard CV review, using research outputs to create more precise and valuable matches. In doing so, InnoNext turns European collaboration into tangible value for both innovation and competitiveness.

LINKS Foundation Activities

LINKS Foundation is the project coordinator, contributing expertise in AI, advanced data-driven solutions, project management, and stakeholder engagement across the full lifecycle of InnoNext.

Talent-Job Matching using LLMs

Application of Artificial Intelligence and deep learning techniques, in particular Large Language Models (LLMs), to automate and optimise the process of:

• enriching research talents from EU programmes with their research publications history via Scholar Open Data repositories (ORCID, CrossRef, …)
• matching candidate profiles to internship opportunities offered by SMEs and startups based on both their CVs and their research publications
• ensuring transparency, non-discrimination, and explainability in AI-driven recommendations, in line with the EU AI Act

Project Initiation, Design, and Management

Leadership of the foundational design phase and integrated project management, including:

• needs consolidation and scheme co-design with the European Commission
• configuration of the ICT platform as the digital backbone of InnoNext
• quality assurance, risk monitoring, and financial and administrative oversight
• liaison with EC representatives and stakeholder engagement throughout the project lifecycle

Exploitation and Commercialisation of AI Results

Development of an AI-driven talent acquisition platform combining LINKS’s AI algorithms with the Inrecruiting software solution (brought by partner Intervieweb), with a joint exploitation route targeting the wider EU HR technology and innovation ecosystem market.

Funding & Dates

SDGs — Sustainable Development Goals

💼 Goal 8 — Decent Work and Economic Growth

🏭 Goal 9 — Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Key Technologies

🤖 AI & Large Language Models

The InnoNext matchmaking engine is powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) customised on EU open data and the ESCO skills taxonomy. Instead of keyword-based CV screening, the pipeline turns both sides of the match into rich semantic representations: researcher profiles (CVs enriched with their publication history) on one side, and the internship opportunities published by SMEs and start-ups on the other. Skills and competencies are extracted from free text and mapped onto the standardised ESCO vocabulary, so that candidates and openings are compared on a common, machine-readable basis. Candidate-opportunity pairs are then scored by semantic similarity and ranked, with the model generating a natural-language justification for each recommendation. This customisation on EU research and innovation data keeps the matches domain-aware, transparent, non-discriminative, and explainable (in line with the EU AI Act).

💻 ICT Platform — Inrecruiting

A cloud/SaaS-based Applicant Tracking System (ATS), brought by partner Intervieweb and enhanced within InnoNext, serving as the digital backbone for open call management, candidate profiles, matchmaking results, and internship process tracking across all cycles.

📊 Open Data Integration

Automated ingestion of Scholar (ORCID, CrossRef, Scopus, etc.) and EU (Cordis) Open Data Repositories, to build and continuously update a Talents Database linking researchers to their projects, publications, and patents.

🔁 Iterative Scheme Methodology

A six-step cyclical methodology — Call Preparation, Dissemination, Matchmaking, Internship Activation, Mentoring & Acceleration, and Monitoring & Evaluation — executed across five cycles over the project duration, with continuous improvement loops between each cycle.

📈 Impact Assessment Framework

A structured evaluation methodology combining online surveys, focus groups, and performance indicators to measure entrepreneurial mindset development, knowledge transfer, and visibility of EU funding programmes among researchers and host companies.

Project Partners