{"id":36175,"date":"2026-07-31T16:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T13:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/?p=36175"},"modified":"2026-07-31T16:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T13:34:12","slug":"beyond-deliverables-how-idealist-is-helping-to-better-shape-ukraines-industry-5-0-ecosystem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clusters.org.ua\/en\/news-en\/beyond-deliverables-how-idealist-is-helping-to-better-shape-ukraines-industry-5-0-ecosystem\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Deliverables: How IDEALIST Is Helping to Better Shape Ukraine’s Industry 5.0 Ecosystem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost every application to a European grant programme contains a separate section devoted to the sustainability of project results. We describe plans for disseminating and exploiting the results after the funding period ends, attracting new users, developing partnerships and scaling the outcomes further. Donors quite rightly expect the tools, methods and knowledge created within a project to remain in use after the grant has ended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practice, however, we have repeatedly seen a different picture. Most projects successfully fulfil their formal commitments. Work packages are completed, deliverables are prepared, training programmes are delivered, digital platforms are created and final reports are accepted by the donor. When assessed against the classic criteria of project management, everything appears to have gone exactly as planned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet one or two years later, a significant share of these results has virtually disappeared from day-to-day practice. Project websites are no longer updated. The platforms that were created lose their active users. Methodologies remain available as PDF files but are not integrated into actual services. Expert networks gradually fade away. New consortia then often begin researching issues that had already been addressed thoroughly several years earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have encountered this in our own work as well. One of the clearest examples was our attempt to use the outputs of the European ADMA project while implementing digital transformation initiatives for Ukraine’s light industry. Despite the high quality of the materials, many practical tools were no longer available or supported, which severely limited their reuse. As for the projects run by our own clusters, the Executive Directorate of the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance estimates that more than 70% do not achieve sustainability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recent years, we have observed a similar situation in dozens of projects related to Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0: their results are rarely used in practice, or are not even known to members of our community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This raises a simple question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Why do even high-quality European projects so rarely lead to lasting change?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The more we work with different international initiatives, the more convinced we become that the problem does not lie in the quality of the results themselves. On the contrary, most of them are professional, well structured and fully suitable for practical use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue is different. We have become very good at producing project outputs, but we devote far less attention to how those outputs should become part of an ecosystem’s everyday life after the funding ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why IDEALIST has become much more than just another European project for us. De facto, it is one of our most revealing projects, because it is where we are fundamentally changing our approach to sustainability. Instead of asking, ‘Have we completed all the planned deliverables?’, we have started asking, ‘What will happen to these results after the project ends?’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past year, the APPAU team has deliberately integrated selected IDEALIST tools and approaches into the development of Ukraine’s Industry 5.0 ecosystem, particularly into the practices of Ukrainian Cluster Alliance clusters and the new European Digital Innovation Hub, EDIH Kyiv HiTech. Some tools were used almost unchanged. Others had to be substantially rethought in response to Ukrainian realities: the war, energy instability, workforce shortages, new business requirements and the need for the rapid digital transformation of industrial enterprises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accordingly, this article is not about the IDEALIST project itself. It is about how the results of a European project can be embedded in the sustainable practices of entire industrial ecosystems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The context of APPAU joining IDEALIST<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Joining the IDEALIST project in 2023 was APPAU’s first, and very welcome, engagement with Horizon Europe. It was already the second year of the full-scale war, and our team urgently needed partnerships of this kind. We would therefore like to express our sincere gratitude to the French cluster CIMES, whose support made our participation possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The project offers a wide range of tools and working formats across four areas, shown in Fig\u044e 1, that have proven effective in European countries and are highly relevant to Ukrainian markets. These include strategic and technology foresight, specialised study tours for exchanging experience on the twin transition of SMEs, advanced hackathons and brokerage events under the Hack&Match format, programmes for import substitution of critical materials, access to the AGORA platform of EIT Manufacturing, and more. All of this is designed for three major market segments – automotive and mobility, aerospace and defence, and energy-intensive industries – within strong inter-cluster cooperation involving 13 participants from six EU countries.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Fig. 1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

However, APPAU’s participation in the project proved more difficult than we had expected. Restrictions on foreign travel for APPAU leadership and member SMEs, for whom travel budgets had been allocated, immediately and sharply limited Ukrainian participation. Without in-person participation and exchanges, the overall effectiveness of cooperation decreases significantly. We also faced our own resource constraints. It later became clear that, under wartime conditions, exchanges of experience in innovative development were no longer perceived as a sufficiently high priority by our SMEs – or, at the very least, were very difficult to promote. There were many reasons for the low engagement of our ecosystem participants, but in general they reflected a complex set of wartime economic factors, with the shortage of qualified professionals for innovation-development missions standing out most clearly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

IDEALIST as a catalyst for ecosystem development<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The situation began to change when we were able to attend consortium meetings in person. Since October 2025, the value of the tools offered by the project has become much clearer, and we have continued working to adapt and introduce them into Ukraine’s Industry 4.0-5.0 ecosystem. What exactly does this mean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introducing strategic foresight techniques. <\/strong>Their use in APPAU’s practice was mandatory under the project. However, beyond completing our own ‘homework’, APPAU proposed extending this practice to all clusters of the Ukrainian Cluster Alliance. By integrating the technique into the broader theme of resilience, the UCA presented its vision of a ‘Resilience DNA’ in November within the comprehensive Shaping Resilient Future concept.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Fig. 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Later, the UCA made the introduction of resilience practices one of its objectives for 2026, while APPAU released the UA Automation Resilience Stack<\/a> – a set of strategic directions in which technologies and new models of cooperation can increase the resilience of entire sectors. In this transfer process, the focus of foresight sessions has also changed. Alongside traditional technology drivers, we added the factors that now shape the competitiveness of Ukrainian industry: energy security, workforce shortages, supply-chain resilience and war-related risks. As a result, foresight is becoming not only a tool for anticipating technologies, but also a tool for strategic resilience planning for all participants in our clusters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hack&Match. <\/strong>These are hackathons combined with matchmaking events. The project first collects challenges around defined topics, after which solution providers enter the process. IDEALIST held five such events online, and each of them offered considerable value to APPAU members by clearly revealing the landscape of needs and solutions among European innovators. We adapted this tool in our ecosystem in several ways:<\/p>\n\n\n\n