CREATE IT REAL A/S

Their core work

Create it REAL is a Danish technology SME that connects digital fabrication communities with real-world manufacturing systems. Their work sits at the intersection of the maker movement — distributed, community-driven production — and industrial-scale manufacturing flexibility. In the Eur3ka project, they contributed to frameworks enabling manufacturers to rapidly repurpose production lines for critical supply needs, such as medical equipment during the COVID-19 crisis. Their practical focus is on making manufacturing more responsive and accessible through digital tools, cross-sector coordination, and Manufacturing-as-a-Service models.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their earliest H2020 work (MAKE-IT, 2016-2018) was rooted in understanding how maker communities and collective awareness platforms create distributed value — an exploratory, sociotechnical perspective on digital fabrication. By 2020, that foundation had been redirected toward industrial urgency: the Eur3ka project applied similar distributed-production logic to the problem of repurposing manufacturing capacity for medical supplies under crisis conditions. The trajectory is a clear maturation from studying community-scale digital making to deploying those principles in high-stakes industrial and healthcare contexts.

Create it REAL is moving from grassroots digital fabrication research toward enterprise-facing manufacturing flexibility and crisis-response production systems — a trajectory that aligns with growing EU interest in supply chain sovereignty and on-demand industrial capacity.

How they like to work

Create it REAL has participated in both projects as a consortium partner rather than a coordinator, suggesting they contribute focused technical or methodological expertise within larger research teams rather than driving project governance. Their two projects collectively involved 31 unique partners across 15 countries — a broad network for a two-project SME, indicating they join ambitious, multi-stakeholder consortia. This pattern makes them a reliable specialist contributor who brings a defined capability to diverse collaborative settings.

Despite only two projects, Create it REAL has established connections with 31 unique partners across 15 countries — an unusually wide reach for an SME of this size. Their network spans both the digital/ICT pillar (MAKE-IT) and the health/manufacturing pillar (Eur3ka), giving them cross-domain exposure beyond what their project count would suggest.

What sets them apart

Create it REAL occupies an unusual niche as a small Danish firm that has operationalized maker-movement principles within serious industrial and healthcare supply challenges — a combination few SMEs can credibly claim. Their direct involvement in COVID-19 manufacturing repurposing gives them rare, hands-on experience with rapid production flexibility under real crisis conditions. For consortium builders targeting manufacturing resilience, digital supply chains, or MaaS platforms, they bring a human-centered, community-informed perspective that larger engineering firms typically do not carry.

Highlights from their portfolio

• Eur3ka
  Largest budget (EUR 182,000) and most recent project — directly addresses COVID-19 manufacturing repurposing for medical supplies, combining MaaS, digital transformation, and cross-sector crisis response in a single IA-funded effort.
• MAKE-IT
  Foundational RIA project establishing their expertise in collective awareness platforms and the maker movement, providing the participatory-production intellectual base for later industrial work.