THE RIGHT PROJECT IN SHORT

An Interreg North Sea Region (NSR) co-funded project which aims to enhance regional innovation support capacity to increase long-term innovation levels and support smart specialisation strategies. To achieve this, RIGHT concentrates its efforts on developing the skills of the workforce relevant for SMEs in the participating regions within the energy and blue sectors.

The project's total budget is € 3.366.047, where 50% is funded by the project partners, 39% by the European Union, and 11% by the Norwegian government.

Status after Project's end in May 2022:

The RIGHT project, part financed by the Interreg North Sea Program, intended to contribute to growth in the North Sea Region by connecting smart specialization strategies to human capital and skills development of the workforce in order to support competitiveness.

The purpose of RIGHT has been to address the challenge of bridging the gap between the skills of the workforce and the need from the industry to innovate and raise competitiveness. In the RIGHT project, the focus was specifically on how to bridge this gap in the emerging and fast changing skills environment of the energy and blue sectors, and the need of industries to innovate and raise competitiveness. As RIGHT is a transnational project, the objective has also been to increase collaboration and learning between regions.

RIGHT started out by mapping the challenges of the skills and innovation gaps in the North Sea Region within the framework of the third work package (WP3). The aim was to identify skills, design of education curricula and training systems needed for industrial sectors in transition, both in the present and future, and for Smart Specialization Strategies. WP3 identified gaps in the partner regions through desk research, mapping, interviews and collaboration with business and clusters, Selected SMEs in all partner regions were also asked to identify the challenges they faced and what was needed to innovate. Seven regional reports and a trans-regional report were produced as a result. The regional reports served both as an audit of the region for their key regional actors as well as introductory briefs to the seven participating regions to each other. The reports provide insights on the participating regions in terms of their regional innovation ecosystems, including labour market and education sector, with a specific focus on energy and/or blue sectors

Through the regional innovation ecosystem audits, RIGHT partners discovered they faced similar overall challenges despite national or regional borders. This created common interests and stronger partnerships.

The next phase of the project was WP4 which identified and launched local pilot initiatives. Through local cooperation, partners facilitated pilots, courses and workshops aligning initiatives to meet the needs of the business and local communities. The COVID-19 pandemic was a major shock deeply impacting people, enterprises, public authorities, municipalities, and regions. It impacted the pilots and decimated physical collaborations and meetings both within and across regions. There were therefore delays and adaptations to the pilots. The pandemic highlighted the urgency of upskilling, reskilling, and increasing innovation capacities of individuals, businesses and regions but also of the interconnectedness of skills, innovation and the resilience agenda. There was a clearer understanding for the need to speed up digital transitions, to address social and economic inequalities and to develop new forms of adaptability to deal with the multiple and new challenges arising. The power of collective efforts was also reinforced during the pandemic and the more recent invasion of Ucraine.

The final part of the RIGHT project was the policy work package(WP5) in which lessons learned from the project were drawn up and then captured in this and other documents. The work package 5 also included various regional and transnational seminars and meetings to discuss and reflect on the lessons learned in the pilot activities and of recent developments. A separate policy document has been developed to discuss in more depth the overall lessons learned for the partners and the policy implications for the project area.

Find out more... or see our short videos in the Media section describing different aspects of the RIGHT project.

RIGHT

THE RIGHT PROJECT IN SHORT

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