Collaborative platform to support research and technology transfer
NEXT intends to create a collaborative platform to support innovation and technology transfer in the Countries of the Adriatic area. The project is promoted by 11 partners from six Countries: Italy, Croatia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro and the representatives of different interests and positions of the actors of innovation: Universities, Regional Development Agencies, Chamber of Economy and Local Authorities. The project stems from some considerations: - The borders of these Countries, known for years as places of exacerbation of national differences, represent nowadays concrete grounds for overcoming the restrictions and contrasts, and offer new opportunities in the field of research, innovation and technology transfer. The cross-border areas lie at the forefront of the main challenge that will increasingly be posed to the larger Europe: managing diversity and competitiveness while at the same time maintaining cohesion. - Innovation and technology transfer, widely re-called in national and EU research programs, are in recent years facing new challenges due to factors such as: the impact of globalization; the emergence of new pervasive products and technologies; the difficulty in finding financial resources for R&I in particular in an atomized and undercapitalized industrial context; the consciousness that innovation takes place in "systems" or open networks, through the interaction of actors which are different in competences, skills, objectives. These challenges and complexity factors require therefore to act over vast areas that go beyond individual regions or Countries and on the connections among systems significantly different from each other (research, education, industry, finance, public administration). Unlike other similar initiatives, the distinctive and effective innovation that distinguishes NEXT is an original mix of virtual services (online platform for information sharing, access to common services, etc.) and material services/products provided directly to partners, SMEs, research and technology transfer centers, institutions. The services/products offered by the NEXT project - the following are the main ones – take into account these considerations. Based on a context analysis and through an effective involvement of the "actors of innovation" in the areas represented, "NEXT open book" will be created, a Repository which can be constantly updated by research and technology transfer centers (both public and private). A summary report ("NEXT trend") will also be produced to give details, for each of the territories involved, of the level of technological intensity, the results of excellence in the field of research and innovation, investment opportunities, public policies support. Both of the tools will be functional to identify and give visibility to excellence competences, thereby facilitating the interaction between the different research actors. The implementation of an online platform will simplify and speed up the opportunities for collaboration, contributing to the establishment/strengthening of supply chains and clusters as well as to the attraction of investments and the resulting capitalization of the leading innovation sectors. In order to consolidate the reaction system, together with a series of platform-based online services ("NEXT Box"), specific initiatives will be implemented for the promotion of investment opportunities (e.g. Promotion of patents and supporting actions for spin-offs and research groups for submission to potential investors) ("NEXT Investment booster"). Following an analysis of the experimentation conducted and partnerships developed within the project, suggestions will be provided to the Programme Authority, and indications for the development of the policies to support innovation in the reference area ("NEXT Outlook "); a feasibility study (" NEXT Suite ") will also be conducted to verify the future sustainability of the initiative.