Halftime: 6th EmpInno Meeting in Lublin/PL
The 6th EmpInno meeting on RIS3 empowerment for innovation and targeted growth took place in Lublin from 13-15th November. In the capital of the Lubelskie Voivodeship – the biggest city of Eastern Poland – the EmpInno partners from all across the Baltic Sea region came together to make joint progress on the transnational project. After the warm welcoming speeches given by the Polish partner hosts in the Lublin Development Foundation and the Lubelskie Voivodeship the project partners discussed how the involvement of SMEs took place in the Entrepreneurial Discovery Process of the smart specialisation strategies and whether SMEs are involved now. Given that the project has reached halftime, the partners started to work on a first part of recommendations related to the involvement of the end-users, since sharing one´s experiences is crucial to creating synergies and to producing added value that can benefit also actors beyond the partnership. From the two Polish Voivodeships Lubelskie and Kujawsko-Pomorskie the participants learned about the experiences in setting up and implementing their regional smart specialisation strategies. The Lubelskie Voivodeship presented the interrelations with the Central Baltic project SMART-Watch that serves to reduce the gap in monitoring systems for RIS3. Finally, the first day of the project partner’s meetup thus ended with an insightful study trip to URSUS – an internationally operating Polish company which specialises in the manufacture of agricultural machinery, based in Lublin.
On the second day, the project partners were
introduced to an internal workshop to work on the Business Modell Canvas. This
instrument should inspire the project partners to further elaborate their organisational
coaching tools to upgrade the capacity of working with the regional smart
specialisation strategy. Finally, mutually enriching discussions took place in
four of the project partners’ six smart specialisation areas (ICT, Energy, Food,
as well as Health, Life Science and Biotechnology) for which regional
stakeholders of the Lubelskie Voivodeship joined the project partners to establish
contacts and networking. The meeting thus came to an end with many new ideas, diverse
experiences and in-depth knowledge on the topic of RIS3. The next meeting will be held in Estonia in
spring 2018 when the country is celebrating its 100th anniversary.
What a great window of opportunity to continue cooperating and spreading the
word on smart specialisation!
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