ELISE addresses a societal challenge common to European regions: to promote better health and life for all. ELISE partners from 7 regions believe that the concrete application of the Life Science Ecosystem concept at regional and interregional level can help to address these constraints. Over the past 5 years, partners exchanged good practices and experiences to identify ways of improving their policies. As a result of the Action Plan implementation process, ELISE can now show a variety of achievements able to influence positively research and innovation activities in partners’ territories.
Lithuania - Kaunas
In ELISE project Kaunas region is addressing the strategic goal of the RIS3 (to create innovative technologies, products, processes and methods that respond to global and national challenges and to increase competitiveness (including commercialization of knowledge), thanks to synergy between science and businesses, economic entities and other public and entities of private sectors. The latest analyses show that cities are facing increasing environmental, social and economic challenges therefore the unified preventive ecosystem of Kaunas city was created to solve them, i.e. to create the smart, environmentally friendly, innovative, clean, sustainable and green city which could be attractive for foreign and national investments. For this purpose the experiences from other project partners - Le Studium (Region Centre Val de Loire, France), Board of Trustees (Mecklenburg – Verpommern, Germany) and Wellness Valey (Emilia – Romagna region, Italy)
Based on the experiences and discussion with the main stakeholders - business, policy makers, academia, investors and citizens it was decided to establish centre of communication and cooperation - Co- creation Hub (CH), which addresses awareness-raising, capacity-building and collaboration through research and practice and ensures development of the new lines for communication between different actors of the ecosystem. Also strengthen research, technological development and innovation, improve an operational program for investing the European Structural and Investment funds which is provided in the Strategic Plan of the Kaunas City Municipality.
France - Centre Val de Loire
In the region Centre Val de Loire (France), the policy instrument improved is the ERDF Operative Programme 2014-2020, Axis 1 Knowledge Society. It is combined with the Regional “Ambition Research & Development” (ARD) instrument to support major R&D programmes. One of these programmes, namely the “Biopharmaceuticals” Program, is strongly linked to the “Biotechnology and applied services for health” specialization domain of the Regional Innovation Strategy (RIS).
The first action enabled to foster the dialogue between the public laboratories and companies for a higher economic impact. The implementation of the SPARK Initiative (ART-ER Good Practice) offered a new way for researchers to think research output/results with a valorisation potential for end-users.
The second action consisted in improving the governance of the RIS specialisation domains, more strongly involving company clusters in order to increase coherence and synergies between projects. It was inspired by the “Board of Trustees” implemented by BioCon Valley.
Actions implemented thanks to ELISE opened additional perspectives for the new generation of ARD programmes, with a strong focus on developing cooperation at the international level.
Slovakia - Košice region
Two partners from Slovakia implemented project ELISE - one focused on national level of policy improvement and the second on the regional level. On national level activities were focused on supporting the development of call for project proposals from structural funds that target clusters. This is important for the development of innovation ecosystem as clusters in Slovakia are underdeveloped or do not provide services as they should be which is reflected on lack of funding. This call can bridge funding gap for Slovak cluster and help to unify atomised stakehoders of Slovak R&I. Inspirations for the suggestions towards the call were obtained in both Germany and Italy.
On regional level Košice Self-Governing Region approved the Regional innovation strategy (RIS) of Košice region, an active tool to ensure competitiveness of the territory. R&I has crucial role for the regional development thus clusters and support of ecosystems observed in ELISE project were implemented into this strategy - to stop brain drain, creating new job opportunities as well as support innovations in its region and develop new modern and creative high-tech industry. 2 clusters are being established Innovation centre of Košice and Cassovia New Industry Cluster (CNIC). Investment for this cluster is 300 mil. € and should act as meeting point for innovation ecosystem in whole region.
