European Commission

 

Dissemination and exploitation
of results of our programmes

Why disseminate and exploit results?

To spread and embed

EU-funded education and culture projects need to reap the maximum yield from their activities. This involves preparing the ground for their work, carrying out their project while harvesting its results, distributing these results to the various end-users and stakeholders, and ensuring that others can exploit the project’s output.

Dissemination and exploitation are the better part of valorisation

In order to serve the public good, projects need to disseminate and exploit their results and outputs – this twin role is often informally referred to in English using the French term valorisation which basically encompasses all activities that maximise the achievements of a project.

This is done with a view to optimising the value of the project, strengthening its impact, transferring it to other contexts, and integrating it in a sustainable manner into the broader European context. It is all about thinking outside the box and continuing to build upon a project after its lifetime, by enabling others to apply it or take it to the next step.
But what exactly are dissemination and exploitation, and how do they differ?

Spread the word

Derived from the Latin for "abroad" (dis) and "seed" (semin), to disseminate simply means to “spread widely”. And that is precisely what disseminating your project results is all about: spreading them far and wide.
The European Commission defines dissemination as “a planned process of providing information on the quality, relevance and effectiveness of the results of programmes and initiatives to key actors. It occurs as and when the results of programmes and initiatives become available.”

Embed and wed

"To exploit" means “make use of and derive benefit from (a resource)”. Although your project is an entity and product in its own right, it is also important to see it as a resource or a tool that you will put in the hands of others.
The Commission divides exploitation into two distinct categories: mainstreaming and multiplication. Mainstreaming is “the planned process of transferring the successful results of programmes and initiatives to appropriate decision-makers in regulated local, regional, national or European systems”. In contrast, multiplication is “the planned process of convincing individual end-users to adopt and/or apply the results of programmes and initiatives.”