Knowledge and Innovation Covenant 2020-2023

Climate change, cyber security, ageing: our society is facing a number of major challenges that call for more knowledge and groundbreaking innovations. This offers opportunities for scientists, companies and public parties. NWO is responding to this by investing more than 100 million euros a year in research in which public and private parties work together.

The financial contribution of NWO is confirmed in the Knowledge and Innovation Covenant (KIC) 2020-2023, in which knowledge institutions, the business community, governments and other public parties jointly invest in innovation. This funding is in line with the government’s mission-driven top sector and innovation policy.

Research and innovation topics

The KIC 2020-2023 is based on mission-driven top sector and innovation policy. It focuses on four major societal themes, key enabling technologies, and societal earning capacity. The four main themes are:

• Energy transition & sustainability
• Agriculture, water & food
• Health & Care
• Safety

These themes have been further elaborated into concrete missions in the Knowledge and Innovation Agendas (KIA), drawn up by representatives of the business community and the government. The KIAs contain research and innovation topics that knowledge institutions and companies can address in public-private partnerships. The NWO contribution to the KIC 2020-2023 focuses on scientific and practice-oriented research into questions that contribute to the concrete missions. The KIAs form the starting point for the NWO programming.

Read more about the NWO funding instruments.

Please contact ChemistryNL if you have questions about your research regarding the missions and the themes.