The Cultural Innovation Fund of the Sofia Development Association and the Applied Research and Communications Fund are participating in InnoBridge, a joint INTERREG initiative of eight European regions. They present financial instruments to support innovation in priority sectors of the local economy. The Bulgarian partners are contributing with best practices for turning research into market success and with work on the “InnoBridge Practical Guide” for developing innovation into a product with economic realisation.
The Innovation Fund of the Sofia Development Association and the Applied Research and Communications Fund are the Bulgarian partners in the InnoBridge project, together with organisations from Austria, Spain, Italy, Poland, Finland, Hungary and Portugal. The Fund presents the capital’s opportunities to support and promote innovation in the creative and cultural industries at an important stage of their innovation cycle – prototyping, promotion to first customers, and mentoring.
The Fund made a joint analysis of the Fund’s activities and described it as a good example of public-private partnership. It also participated in the development of the “InnoBridge Practical Guide”, which summarises partners’ knowledge and best practices for turning research and innovation into market success.
The experience of the Region of Castilla y Leon, Spain, in networking some of the oldest universities in Europe to share their research infrastructure, is interesting. The Open Innovation Platforms of the Tampere region, Finland, are in many aspects ground-breaking worldwide. The innovation support measures of the Lower Austria region (lead partner of InnoBridge) have been implemented and developed for more than 20 years. The regions of Alentejo (Portugal) and Malopolska (Poland) are participating with their systems to stimulate research in enterprises, while Pannon-Novum (Hungary) and Bolsano (Italy) will present their instruments in June.
The INTERREG initiative “InnoBridge – Bridging the innovation gap through converting R&D results into commercial success in a more effective and efficient way” aims to increase the competitiveness of SMEs by improving their innovation potential, the commercialisation rate of new developments and the effectiveness of regional innovation support policies.
According to Eurostat (2016), almost half of European enterprises contribute to increased innovation activity in the EU. Almost a third of companies (31.2%), were involved in joint innovation developments. As a result of this and other factors, the EU has moved closer to the innovation leaders, the US and Japan ( Innovation Union Scoreboard 2015).
All regions participating in the InnoBridge project will publish their best practices on the InnoBridge e-page as well as on Twitter and in their newsletter.
For more information:
Denitsa Marinova
Applied Research and Communications Fund
Tel: 02/ 9733000, e-mail: denitsa.marinova(at)online.bg
