From the 28th to 29th of November 2017 the INKREASE partners and local stakeholders were gathered in Aarhus, Central Denmark Region, for the fourth interregional meeting.
On the 28th their focus was on how Central Denmark Region works with innovation in SME's and knowledge collaboration. In the morning REG LAB, which is a Danish, non-profit, member based “laboratory” for regional economic development, gave a presentation about knowledge collaboration in Denmark and presented a guide with 14 steps/focus points for a successful knowledge collaboration project. Since Central Denmark Region and the INKREASE project have been contributing to the analysis, you can read the guide here.
Furthermore, some of Central Denmark Region's innovation programmes were presented. An in-depth presentation on the programme Future Food Innovation was given by Lars Horsholt Jensen from Agro Business Park.
Afterwards, an older programme called "Shortcut to New Knowledge" was peer-reviewed. Many good questions were asked beforehand, which Finn Pedersen (CDR) and Bettina Dencker Hansen (Aarhus University) responded to and followed with a lively debate.
During the afternoon the participants could choose between two study tours. Half of the group joined a tour of the Department of Engineering at Aarhus University, where they have an incubator for students and start-ups. Here we visited the local start-up GameScorekeeper who specializes in tracking, analysis, and visualisation software for the booming eSports market, and has participated in a knowledge collaboration facilitated by the InnoBooster programme (a national innovation programme). Actually, "Shortcut to New Knowledge" has inspired the InnoBooster programme, which was elaborated for the participants.
The other half of the group visited Queen – Knud Jepsen A/S, a world-leading producer and developer of kalanchoe plants. Queen has participated in the regional Future Food Innovation programme and shared their experiences with the crowd. The participants visited Queen's head office and 120.000 m2 nursery, where they learned more about how Queen is exploring the effect of different shades of light on plant growth.
In the evening we visited Njord Gin Destillery – Denmark's one and only dedicated gin distillery and Aarhus' first distillery in more than 100 years. Njord Gin is handcrafted, hand-bottled, hand-labeled, and each batch and bottle is numbered. Njord Gin has also participated in Future Food Innovation with a project on taste development.
The next day Bretagne Region was next in line for a peer-review. Bertrand Piechaczyk (Bretagne Developpement Innovation) and Perrine Franca (Université Bretagne Loire) presented "PLUG IN LABS OUEST". Bertrand and Perrine answered questions from the group and facilitated a thorough debate on the programme.
The next step for the INKREASE partners is to write down and reflect on their learnings, in order to be inspired for future policies in each region. At the end of the INKREASE project every partner has to produce an action plan for how they will implement one of the good practices that they have learned about.
If you want to know more about the good practices of the two regions, you can read more here.
