The Policy Learning Platform of Interreg Europe organized an event on research & innovation and SME competitiveness in Milan on the 19-20 October 2017.The two days focused on good practices and exchange /networking. Many regional and national managing authorities participated and provided their own knowledge and good practices.
OSIRIS was represented by Umberto Pernice, external expert at Region Västerbotten, lead partner of OSIRIS, who gave an inspirational talk about the OSIRIS interregional exchange experience of partners with some insights on early results achieved after the first 18 months. In particular, the talk focused on the success of the Innovation Loop, the Good Practice of Region Västerbotten, used in all the project co-creation workshops for co-generating ideas which use open and social innovation approaches for stimulating regional innovation.
The presentation explained how the implementation of this good practice is helping the project partners to co-generate innovative solutions addressing relevant challenges of each regional territory of the OSIRIS consortium, including smart energy, rural development, urban regeneration, creative industries, etc. Mr. Pernice explains:
- The adoption of the Innovation loop is allowing the broad and diverse community of partners and stakeholders of OSIRIS to make the most of diversities in issues, dimensions, socio-cultural and technological background of the seven regions involved in the project. The Innovation Loop is guiding the knowledge exchange with a set of easy tools through which policy makers, academics, business and citizens analyse, jointly and iteratively, at each meeting, the challenges of their territories and co-design innovative solutions, according to the cyclical logic of this Good Practice.
OSIRIS is aiming at improving seven Policy Instruments by injecting OSI approaches which enable policy-makers to timely address real issues with innovative solutions. In that direction, the LP indicated that:
• OSIRIS partners and stakeholders are committed to invest effort to further advance the ideas co-generated by the project during the co-creation events;
• Managing Authorities interested to see how new projects, products and services can be further supported through H2020
• Pilots and other interregional innovation projects are needed
• the OSIRIS consortium is aiming at a capitalization plan to strategically advance the results achieved by partners on the modification of the policy instruments in each regional territory.
This requires a thorough analysis of different cooperation scenarios between partners looking at other funding instruments like Horizon 2020.
- Policy Learning platform events are very useful events where the large community of Interreg project partners and stakeholders can explore how to capitalize the results already achieved in their projects and identify new cooperation possibilities. Looking at the results already achieved by other projects under the “R&I Policy Learning Platform” we can better understand how to strengthen the implementation of the improved Policy Instruments of the OSIRIS regional partners. Moreover, this kind of events helps to identify synergies between ESIF and H2020 funds to give continuity to the solutions introduced in these Policy Instruments and exploit networking occasions for potential cooperation with other projects, Umberto Pernice concludes.
