ZENIT GmbH, founded in 1984, is a Public-Private Partnership with around 60 employees, working in interdisciplinary teams. The stakeholders are the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (represented by the ministry of economics), a consortium of banks and an association comprising of approximately 180 enterprises, the ZENIT e.V.
On behalf of the EU, national and regional bodies, ZENIT provides services for the benefit of companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as universities and research institutions. The services provided are among others innovation and technology consultancy, internationalisation and policy consultancy. On behalf of clients, ZENIT checks whether R&D projects are eligible for funding, advises on suitable programmes, helps in project planning, and assists in formulating applications and in project implementation.
Since 1995 ZENIT is engaged in European projects in the area of technology transfer and innovation. One of the biggest projects is the Enterprise Europe Network (started in 2008). In this framework, ZENIT supports its clients (SMEs, universities and research institutes) in several disciplines, like technology transfer, internationalisation, brokerage events, and innovation management consultancy. ZENIT works closely with technology-driven SMEs, scale-ups and spin-offs to realize its tasks within various regional and EU projects on transfer and innovation.
ZENIT and iPRODUCE
At iPRODUCE, ZENIT helps small and medium-sized companies to find international cooperation partners and to identify financing sources for their innovation projects. On one hand, they contribute with this know-how to the makers and companies involved in the project. On the other hand, they can promote iPRODUCE results to a larger audience.
They work alongside the German partners FIT and MSB and also recruit German participants, for the maker activities and workshops.