Northern Connections

First steps towards Northern Connections taken

On December 13-14th 2016, we met in Aarhus, and discussed how to expand our knowledge base as to work with Regional innovation strategies in a transnational perspective and how clusters support SMEs in international innovation.

We discussed how to expand our knowledge base as to work with Regional innovation strategies in a transnational perspective and how clusters support SMEs in international innovation. Amongst other things, we outlined our tasks on developing the clusters’ capacity to engage enterprises in transnational innovation and what is needed to deliver the necessary innovation support.

We also got the first insight into living labs – what they are and what they are not…from our perspective.

We do not consider a Living Lab to be:

  • A Laboratory e.g. used for physical, chemical or mechanical testing and research at a university/institute
  • A Start-up incubator e.g. used to accelerate growth of entrepreneurial businesses at a university/company
  • Trend topics (only) in a city/region e.g. general discussion circles on smart regional specialization without technical or process demonstration taking place today or planned in the future (and backed up by policy, industry and money)
  • Public entity (only) activities e.g. smart government ICT procurement or applications with only one investor being the government and lack of direct enterprises involvement

In Northern Connections a Living Lab generally have the following basic requirements

  1. Strong backup by local politics and civil servants
  2. Critical mass of companies and general private sector engagement
  3. Real market perceptive shown by first investments taking place with significant investment volume

We also learned a lot more and if you wish to learn more, you can follow us on this webspace or twitter. And you can watch watch our film and hear what our partners are looking for in Northern Connections