BRIDGES: a favourite in our 30 stories publication

In 2020, we asked you to vote on your favourite story from our publication on 30 stories of policy changes. In the topic of research and innovation, you chose: BRIDGES.

Meet the project

BRIDGES is trying to improve how RIS3 (Research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation) are implemented, especially in the field of bioeconomy. They want to connect bio-based SMEs with the latest research.

On 10 December 2020, we celebrated BRIDGES’ achievements during an online event. We spoke to Dorota Skwarek, Chief Specialist of Strategic Planning for the Lubelskie region's Department of Strategy and Development in Poland, and asked her a series of questions about the project. Here is a summary:

Q: How does it feel to get the public’s vote?

I’m very happy that so many people voted for our project. All the projects in the publication bring lots of good ideas and practical solutions. And I’m very happy that we are among so many good projects.

Q: What changes did BRIDGES bring to the Lubelskie region?

We could see that companies, especially from the food sector, were not prone to talk with academia. One of the impacts we had was to organise information meetings so that they had the possibility to talk directly with people from universities, research, technology and commercialisation centres.

Thanks to those information meetings, the companies learned that there are people in academia who have solutions for them and it’s not hard to speak with them.

Q: Now that the BRIDGES project is finished, what’s next for the partners?

We'll see what the future brings. BRIDGES was our third project with partners from Kainu, Finland, and we really appreciate this cooperation. It's very inspiring! We've started thinking of new topics, but for now it's too early to say.