Through an agile and flexible process, following the Horizon 2020 cascade funding mechanism, ongoingongoing NGI Research and Innovation Actions (RIAs) provide support to projects from outstanding academic researchers, hi-tech startups and SMEs.

Funding is allocated to projects using short research cycles targeting the most promising ideas. Each of the selected projects pursue their own objectives, while the NGI RIAs provide the programme logic and vision, technical support, coaching and mentoring, to ensure that projects contribute towards a significant advancement of research and innovation in the NGI initiative.

The focus is on advanced concepts and technologies that link to relevant use cases and that can have an impact on the market and society over all. Applications and services that innovate without a research component are not covered by this model.