A meeting between potential partners from Gabrovo Region
December 8, 2023
Project partners arrived in Bulgaria for the project’s first face-to-face meeting
February 29, 2024
RIC_AG has started working as a managing partner on a new EU project titled Alliance on interregional innovation investments (ALLON_I3) including:
- 3 less developed regions – Gabrovo, BG; Enna, Sicily, IT; Alentejo, PT, respectively represented by RIC_AG, PRISM and ADRAL (project coordinator);
- 2 regions in transition – Attica, GR; Nicosia, CY, respectively represented by AKEP and SYNTHESIS;
- 1 more developed region – North Denmark, DK, represented by NDEU
- 1 associated partner from Norway.
The overall goal of the project is to enhance the capacity of the participant less developed regions to cooperate with more developed ones and ones in transition by shaping and interweaving the Allon_I3 cross-regional innovation investment ecosystem with stronger value chains or new ones emerging.
The Allon_I3 thematic area is set on ICT/Digitalization + Clean technologies, energy, environment and sustainable development, which is the crosscutting shared S3 priority area of all participant regions. It reflects the dual transition concept that helps businesses become more resilient.
The core project activities follow a gradation streamline starting from ‘Ecosystem building and connection’ (WP2), identifying gaps and business opportunities for reinforcing broken value chains or building new ones by providing ‘Support to the identification of investment projects’ (WP3), and wrapping up with activities dedicated to ‘Scaling-up impact’ (WP4).
Allon_I3 targets simultaneously both (i) the policy, macro-level – by shaping the Allon_I3 ecosystem, and (ii) the micro level, i.e. support the capacity of the Q-helix stakeholders to identify and enhance the set-up and financing of innovation investment projects across regions. Regional roadmaps will empower the regions and the Q-helix stakeholders with partnership agreements and business cases to evolve and mature in the project follow-up stage.
The project expected outcomes are to have more active and better interlinked regional investment and innovation ecosystems in the less developed regions to produce long-term value and to address their specific needs and potential in a wider regional context towards improving the overall economy and innovation climate. The benefit for the regions in transition is to have at the end a stronger drive for better establishing interregional partnerships. The benefit for the more developed regions in this alliance, however strange it may sound, at first glance while being at the same time true, is that one cannot be a regional leader in the long run if the regions around are less developed.
CONTACTS: n.n.hinkova@gmail.com
