Eligibility is based on formal criteria: 

• The mandate holder must hold a doctorate (PhD) degree or obtain his/ her PhD within 6 months. 
• The different partners, the mandate holder, the knowledge centre (university, research centre, higher education institute/ university college, etc.), the academic promotor and the company (companies) are known at the time of the application. The company (companies) and the knowledge centre agree with the execution of the activities. 
• The company must have a registered office in Flanders. Entities that do not have their seats in Flanders, but do envision sufficient valorisation in Flanders in the future can submit an application, conditional to an exceptional permission from VLAIO. 
• For innovation mandates Phase 2, the company is no ‘undertaking in difficulty’ at the moment of the submission. 
• An industrial mentor is appointed by the company to coach the mandate holder. 
• The agreements on intellectual property rights, transfer and the exploitation of the results are known. A signed term sheet or mutual cooperation agreement is included. In the absence of a signed term sheet or cooperation agreement at the deadline for the submission of a project proposal, VLAIO can declare an application conditionally eligible and already initiate the assessment. However, if VLAIO does not possess the term sheet (or cooperation agreement) at the deadline for submission of the term sheet (as stipulated on the website), the project application will be declared ‘ineligible’ and the process initiated provisionally will be stopped. 
• There is no restriction on the number of mandates the same company can coach (and apply for in Phase 2). An individual researcher can only be put forward twice as candidate mandate holder in an application for an innovation mandate. 
• In the course of the eligibility analysis, VLAIO is entitled to seek additional information on formal aspects, such as the status of the company in relation to social security contributions, financial data (to check whether the company has sufficient financial resources at its disposal, is up to date with all government and permit requirements), etc. 

VLAIO may deny eligibility if the company is not abiding by the regulations. 

For the approval of Phase 2, VLAIO may request additional information with the aim of substantiating the financial status of the company. 

The processing of an application for an innovation mandate only starts after it has been declared eligible.

Since the final decision will be based on a reasoned recommendation by a panel of external experts, all candidate mandate holders with an eligible project application will be invited to defend their project proposals before those experts. There is no provision for an oral explanation by the academic promotor and/ or the company representatives. 

Each application is rated on the basis of two assessment dimensions: the scientific quality and the utilisation quality (= potential for economic and social utilisation). Based on the project proposal and on the interview with the candidate mandate holder, the panel of experts will evaluate for each dimension the competences of the candidate and the quality of the project proposal. The assessment is therefore based on four sets of criteria. 

The evaluation criteria are explained in more detail in the document ‘Score grid’.  

In this process, the decision committee always takes a decision on whether a project can or cannot be funded on the basis of substantive scores. If the available budget is insufficient to support all proposals worthy of funding, the highest rated proposals within the available budget will be funded.