Ports as driving Wheels of Entrepreneurial Realm
Cultural borders & political rifts caused in the ADRION area a lack of cooperation and I&D, and a weak application of EU policies; as a result, ADRION ports, also due to small dimensions & infrastructural limits, lost their historical mission as places of exchanges, and suffer now from low modernization rate, inadequate smartness level, and unsolved issues related to sustainability and urban regeneration needs. On the other hand, ADRION ports are still complex ecosystems, offering the perfect substrate for becoming actors of the development in the area again. In this framework, PoWER aims to support the evolution of ports into Innovation Hubs, able to act as new transmission belts between regions, and to exploit their untapped entrepreneurial potential. In particular, PoWER fosters collaboration among the key-actors of the Innovation Supply Chain (ISC): cognitive institutions (schools, Universities, research bodies), enterprises and PAs, in order to turn the multi-layered challenges affecting ADRION ports into an opportunity to integrate, cross-fertilize and exploit the “power” of territories. To this extent, 6 case studies will be carried out in ADRION port areas, where an original approach will be followed by: carrying out collaborative processes applied to energy-oriented issues (energy efficiency, buildings requalification, RES, etc.) to trigger the rise of IHs; building ISCs capable to bridge ideas&production of the energy sector; merging Energy Transition & Gaming Approach as basis for co-creation and social innovation.<br>The project outputs will be:<br>- the PoWER methodology for facilitating the collaboration between enterprises and research institutions and, in so doing, speeding up the building of ISCs;<br>- the Innovation Hubs Network (IHN);<br>- the IHN joint Strategy for the evolution of ports into innovation hubs, supported by an ICT Platform devoted to its implementation. These outputs will allow the members of IHN to pursue the transformation of ADRION ports into IHs as well as the further enlargement of the Network.