Capitalising the full potential of on-line collaboration for smes innovation support in the agri-food ecosystem
INNO-4-AGRIFOOD will deliver a new generation of innovation support services that will assist European SMEs across the vast Agri-food ecosystem to create value from on-line collaboration for innovation, access a broader range of potential innovation partners beyond their national and sectoral borders and timely mobilise them to seize opportunities to launch concrete innovation projects. INNO-4-AGRIFOOD services will be provided by properly qualified and well-trained innovation support specialists and appropriately escalate to respond to the diverse needs and characteristics of agri-food SMEs. They will be platform-independent and supported by a suite of smart ICT tools based on well-established and mainstream web-technologies. In order to equip the staff of innovation intermediaries across Europe with the expertise and skill-set required to deliver its novel innovation support services, INNO-AGRIFOOD will develop a qualification profile that will be complemented with a dedicated curriculum as well as a series of e-training courses provided via an interactive e-learning environment. The development, testing and validation of all project outcomes will take into account the needs of agri-food SMEs and their innovation intermediaries both of which will be effectively integrated along with agri-food stakeholders into a co-creating process to generate demand-driven, desirable and sustainable project outcomes.

INNO-4-AGRIFOOD is implemented by a multidisciplinary and well-balanced consortium that encompasses key collective European agri-food associations, major European networks and SME agencies, leading actors that run FIWARE agri-food accelerators’ communities and Living Labs and a specialised media, e-curriculum and e-training developer.