Fostering continuous research and technology application
Innovation is a results-oriented concept with science and technology as the key to the complex innovation processes embracing many related actors such as technology transfer centres, venture capital, entrepreneurs, etc. Innovation systems are focusing more on relationships and processes between innovation actors in achieving the presence of key factors such high level of research capability, enough high-qualified manpower, adequate infrastructure, retention of enough funds, diffusion of science and technology, innovation culture, inducement of multinational companies or research institutes, favouring conditions for start-ups. Especially in today’s competitive world it is crucial to encourage companies not to only use their internal ideas but also explore what is happening in the field of innovation around them in order to advance their technology processes. And this is a main idea behind so called open innovation, as companies can’t afford to lag behind and rely only on internal research, and on the other they can also further profit from distributing their own inventions to the outside world.

FORT will explore existing and develop further instruments and capabilities for supporting open innovation, which foresees a permeation of Small and Medium Enterprise’s (SME) internal environment into external environment including public Research & Development (R&D) capacities, transnational networks and clusters, thus contributing to overcoming current economic crisis and establishing knowledge-based economy.  