During your visit at the Emilia-Romagna region, did you discover any inspiring stories?
Yes I was surprised to discover the efficiency of the start-up incubator called “le Serre”. It seemed to function very well and it has a very youthful feeling to it.
The region grasped the opportunity to use European funding’s to structure the technopoles. ASTER is the main facilitator and contact point for the entire region. This facilitates partner search as it lets organizations save time by directly identifying ASTER as the local innovation contact. In brief, Emilia Romania is more pragmatic than Brittany due to its simple innovation structure. In Brittany, technopoles have existed for decades but the approach is different as there are many contact points such as clusters, technopoles, the regional economic development agency…
The Emilia Romania’s technopoles were structured very recently and over the past years, they proved to be very efficient in the way they are organized.
Another interesting thing I have noticed is the cultural difference as ASTER (the regional innovation hub) is composed of full time employees as well as by employees from other structures. This is something that is more difficult to establish in France.
Did you manage to find common obstacles concerning the industry of the future?
Unfortunately, I did not get the chance to discover a lot industry of the future companies. Brittany appears to have developed more Industry of the future projects.
You are currently developing several technological innovation projects in the region of Brittany to develop precision measurements in agriculture, are there any potential actions that could be developed with organizations from Emilia Romagna?
The main interest for us was to discover how the Emilia Romania region structures its innovation agencies and to share best practices. This trip has been very helpful and let us compare our two models. It also helped us find potential partners such as companies, universities and research institutions.
