Innovation mandates provide support to postdoctoral researchers who wish to deploy active efforts to achieve the effective transfer, the exploitation and the utilisation of their research findings. This can be done either through a collaboration with an existing company, or by working towards the establishment of a new spin-off company. The ultimate goal is to bridge the gap between academia and industry and to help the researchers to make the transition into the business world. During the implementation of the mandate, the mobility of researchers between academia and industry is encouraged. The projects which are implemented in this funding programme are Strategic Basic Research projects with an economic finality, that are innovative and provide the post-doctoral researcher with ample intellectual properties. Innovation mandates aim to build up scientific or technological knowledge as a basis for economic applications. They present a risk level that is too high to allow their execution as an industrial R&D project.