According to the 2021 European Innovation Scoreboard, the EU's innovation performance has increased by 12.5 percentage points since 2014, but not all EU countries are at the same level of innovation and smart specialization
It is essential to introduce the necessary changes in current policies to achieve a real smart transformation of European industry, with the ultimate goal of becoming more competitive.
There are more than 1,000 clusters in the EU-27, made up of an average of 70% SMEs, 10% of large companies and 8% of research organizations. They represent about 25% of EU employment and are located in around 200 regions across Europe.
More than 80% of European cluster organizations support companies in their digital transition and more than 60% support the green transition.
Thus, changing regional cluster policies will trigger industry transformation on a larger scale, due to the role they play in fostering resilient, green and digital industrial ecosystems.
Over the past two years, partners and stakeholders from the INNO Industry project have been working together by sharing knowledge on digitalization strategies.
The goal is to increase rate of clusters that develop activities to support the transformation towards Industry 4.0 through the improvement of regional and national policies.
By sharing and exchanging over 30 best practices from all around Europe, partners and their stakeholders have used them as a source of inspiration for new solutions for regional policies.
These solutions to boost digitalization have been collected on 10 individual action plans tailored to help mature the industrial fabric of the participating countries
Now, with the beginning of phase two of the project on February 2022, the INNO Industry partners will closely monitor the implementation of their action plans.
