The Northern Connections project is represented at the North Sea Conference 2017 and will focus on what cooperation means for the North Sea Region and how to organize it in the future?
Our presence at the conference will give the participants a heads up on the Northern Connections project and we will be available for discussions on how the joint challenges of the 21 partners in the project are addressed. This serves as inspiration on concrete showing and sharing methods for future cluster-company-community corporations to generate growth and green jobs in SMEs in the North Sea Region. The joint challenges are:
- Innovation support is mainly applied within narrow geographies
- calls to action /innovation challenges and opportunities are not visible transnationally
- cities & clusters lack capacity to involve SMEs broadly.
The Northern Connections approach is to interconnect the NSR better by providing a bridge between private and public sector and support measures that broadens SMEs opportunities to participate in regional innovation activities. This smarter approach to sustainable SMEs will strengthen their ability to take part in global markets and create new value-chains.
What’s in it for the North Sea Region?
Northern Connections is a primary project within the Thinking Growth focus area. Looking in, the way the project manages fluent corporation in a grand project group (21 partners from 6 countries) is inspirational to other NSR projects. Looking out, the external process, upcoming events and demonstrations in Living Labs underlines the NSR focus on innovative flow of knowledge between regions, cities, knowledge institutions and SMEs. Even if it is early on in the Northern Connections project, the partner group is keen to show, share project ideas on how transnational relations in sustainable energy clusters can provide demand-led innovation support, and how political ambition and cluster potential can be combined.