The summer brought two very successful Transfer Workshops to Gävle – on the 25th-26th of June the Valencia Good Practices of VIT Emprende and Valencia Start-up Association and on the 30th-31st of August the Reggio Emilia GPs of Higher education support to the internationalization process of SMEs.
A core group of representatives of the Local Support Group in Gävle participated and engaged in interesting learning and discussions with Javier Mateo and Diego Moya from Valencia in June. The VIT Emprende programme is of great interest to Gävle and our region. Especially interesting for transfer and implementation in our LAP is the creation and continuous development of the ecosystem community, using digital and social media for communication, bringing in new stakeholders, “sharing is caring”, connect, facilitate and boost network and internationalization.
On this theme, Javier and Diego together with Gävle project leader Annika Lundqvist, visited Stockholm and met with Stockholm Business Region for an introduction to the innovation ecosystem and support to internationalization in the Swedish capital and visited EpiCenter, for a presentation on their innovation community.
Many similarities in the work in progress in Valencia/Gävle and ideas that we would like to take further. We hope to be able to conduct a Deep delegation visit to Valencia in the beginning of 2019.
End of August a large group of representatives from the Local Support Group and the University of Gävle met with Giovanna Galli and Marcello Tedeschi from University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE), Giovanni Mattioli from the Reggio Emilia Chamber of Commerce, Claudia Larrichia from the Future Food Institute, Saverio Serri from the municipality of Reggio Emilia and Sabrina Rosati from the E35 Foundation.
As members of Eurotowns, network for medium sized cities , Gävle and Reggio Emilia are familiar to each other and happy to enlarge the cooperation to the field of business development through the Compete In-project!
The good practice Higher education support to SME internationalization of UNIMORE and the cooperation with the municipality of Reggio Emilia is interesting to us in several ways. First, they have been able not only to involve but to get companies to drive processes of internationalization forward, i.e. the Food Innovation Programme and secondly, use the strength of the municipality, i.e. in child education, to contribute to the internationalization of the city, businesses and organisations. We are looking to include both of these aspects in our LAP. Further more, we are interested in Reggio Emilia Chamber of Commerce work with Incoming delegations and are looking at possibilities to introduce this practice to our region. This was discussed at a separate meeting with the Chamber of Commerce of the Mid Central Sweden and will hopefully result in a Deep delegation to Reggio Emilia in 2019.
