About
PERISCOPE aims at establishing a permanent innovation ecosystem in the North Sea Region to grow transnational innovation partnerships for sustainable business development in emerging blue markets.The NSR is a crucial area for Europe's Blue Economy with marine resources, technologically- advanced industries, major port areas and increased offshore activities. Due to global drivers, the wider maritime, marine and offshore economies are exposed to profound challenges with some industries undergoing significant changes, including increased production, as well as stagnation and decrease of production - the NSR is experiencing a period of considerable restructuring.
These new cross-border and cross-sectorial prospects generate new challenges, and ask for trans-national and inter-sectorial solutions supported by incentives to break out of existing silos.
PERISCOPE aims to support Interreg North Sea’s objectives, first and foremost “Thinking growth” by strengthening cross-sector Blue Growth innovation capacity in the NSR by bringing together the players (businesses, entrepreneurs, clusters/networks, researchers, universities, business angels, incubators, investors and funds, customers/users, regional and local authorities and development/business support agencies) for knowledge sharing, acceleration and launch of new innovation-projects for sustainable business development.
Increased competencies on markets and technologies, and the path into future markets, will help businesses realign from mature and declining markets towards attractive new market segments. Facilitating formation of transregional and cross-sector partnerships to pursue opportunities, further boosts the business development potential. The resulting future preparedness of NSR’s players, in particular maritime and marine clusters and their members, may help it boost its position in the global blue economy.
The novel approach to establish a permanent strategic foresight platform at the core of the ecosystem gives a new framework for bottom-up knowledge transfer, while allowing public sector to enhance smart specialisation strategies and support businesses and knowledge institutions to take advantage of the opportunities and growth potential identified within the ecosystem. SMEs benefit by gaining access to strategic know-how, resources and new cross- border knowledge partnerships, which may lead to new markets unfolding.
The long-term objective of PERISCOPE is to establish itself as the leading Blue Growth ecosystem spurring innovations contributing to all four priorities of the Interreg North Sea programme.
The North Sea Region (NSR) is a crucial area for Europe`s Blue Economy, but it is faced with profound challenges. To understand and open up emerging technological and market opportunities, which lead to sustainable innovations, PERISCOPE will establish an entrepreneurial discovery process to reinforce the knowledge base, identify and valorise innovation ideas, and open up a Blue Growth ecosystem to stimulate industry-driven action on the concrete opportunities ahead. PERISCOPE will bring together fragmented and specialised knowledge in a novel entrepreneurial discovery process that will trigger innovations and sustainable business development. Concretely, PERISCOPE will enhance the capacity of 300+ NSR actors within the blue economy, kick start 10+ Blue Growth innovation partnerships within the NSR, accelerate at least two major cross-border innovation projects, and increase understanding of innovation support and conditions for blue business development in the NSR. Linking six NSR countries, PERISCOPE will also improve trans-regional innovation capacity by working with the public sector and enhanced smart specialisation will follow as a consequence of the ecosystem's dialogue platform. Closer transnational cooperation within the project will lead to better synergies in reaping emerging Blue Growth opportunities, utilising funds and infrastructures, and creating a platform for sustainable joint innovation actions and investment.