Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

Participation by women and their success was a wel-
come factor. As regards the type of organisation, uni-
versities and non-university research institutes were 
particularly successful.
Recommendations
Based on these results, the evaluation team recom-
mends that in future the structural requirements of 
the projects should better reflect the thematic 
breadth of the text for the call for proposals. This 
would manage the expectations of the participants 
more effectively so their professional potential can 
be leveraged more fully. This can be achieved by pro-
viding better information – including information 
about the planned process – for participants and 
mentors, so that participants can recognise the pro-
cess steps as being interrelated and mentors have 
even clearer information about their tasks and roles.
The Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) 
should also reduce the number of possible funding 

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Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020
instruments and focus on smaller funding formats in 
the process. A larger number of applications with dif-
ferent project options should be possible in the short 
application phase, so that the results of the creative 
phase can be transferred more effectively to the 
short application phases. The call for proposals 
should also be advertised more widely among the 
target group of companies and application-oriented 
researchers in order to ensure that sufficient num-
bers of these participate in the programme. The Aus-
trian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) should also 
as far as possible allow changes to the project de-
sign during the full application phase. Finally, the 
Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) should 
create networking opportunities for the participants 
in order to help them stay in touch after the projects.
Further trends
Due to the supportive nature of the evaluation, some 
recommendations were already implemented by the 
Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) in the 
second pilot call for proposals in 2019. Among other 
things, companies were specifically addressed 
through appropriate wording of the call for proposals 
question, the duration of the event was reduced to 
3.5 days and the newly formed consortia submitted 
their final application on the last day of the Ideas 
Lab. The jury was then able to recommend six highly 
interdisciplinary projects for funding from the ten ex-
ploratory projects that were submitted.
203
The programme, evaluation results, as well as the 
cooperation in developing the programme with the 
Ludwig Bolzmann Society, which had conducted a 
first Ideas Lab in 2017, were presented and discussed 
with fteval members at an event organised by fteval 
and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) 
in December 2019.
203 See 
https://www.ffg.at/ideenlab/ausschreibung2019
204 See Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT), Federal Ministry of Science and Research (BMWF), 
Austrian Federal Ministry of Economy, Family and Youth (BMWFJ) and Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign 
Affairs (BMEIA) (2013).
205 See Sturn et al. (2019).