Good practice:

R&D&I Industrial Meeting to promote regional cooperation and clusterization processes

The Metal Technological Center of CLM (ITECAM) organizes this encounter aims to increase regional cooperation seeking to intensify new innovative opportunities to promote regional development. This activity brings together the main quadruple helix actors of the CLM R&D&I framework, such as SMEs, big companies, research and technological centers, government representatives, public organizations, university research groups, among other independent consultants and experts. Besides, the presence of international companies promotes interregional agreements and widen the opportunities to be part of global value chains. The event is structured in four main zones: (1) a workspace where the face to face (F2F) encounters (15 min) between organizations take place, aiming to foster collaborations that could be materialized in strategic partnerships and joint projects at European, national or regional level, (2) the Innova+ Area as a meeting point for companies and a selection of research groups of the UCLM, this space is intended to close the gap between academia and industry and promote the transfer of knowledge and, (3) a demonstration area where companies show their advanced technologies, products, and prototypes and, (4) a conference area, where some keynote speakers explain to the participants relevant topics such as KETs, business digitalization, internationalization, CLM-S3, clusters, and network…

Mainly it is financed privately by ITECAM 10.000€. Also, to set up and develop it is funding by the CLM Regional Government 8.000€, sponsors 2.000€, and a participant’s fee 50€. 10 persons are needed to organize and support the event. Some services are subcontracting (catering, space, and promotion)

This is a perfect activity to achieve regional challenges. The event has had an exponential amount in terms of participation year by year, as a result, the 40% of these encounters become into; 15% R&D cooperative project, 10% new commercial cooperation activities, 10% product sales, 5% internationalization alliances.
• 2016 – 150 companies, 255 actors – 320 F2F encounters
• 2017 – 175 companies, 310 actors – 485 F2F encounters
• 2018 – 210 companies, 350 actors - 590 F2F encounters

The main difficulties were mainly two (at first editions): problems to obtain the necessary economic resources through public investment and sponsors, and, to convince some actors about the potential opportunities that could arise thanks to this kind of event.

This event is a successful example of how it could be promoted cooperation among the triple helix actors to contribute to the development of the regional R&D ecosystem. It is also an opportunity for the regional government to catch and observe the capacities and needs of the regional actors, which could help the policy decision making to launch new calls or to improve the policy instruments in order to the necessities of the regional actors. Furthermore, this kind of action provides a perfect atmosphere to support collaborative agreements among R&D&I regional actors in order to achieve common goals, new innovative processes and encourage clusterization initiatives. Thanks to this event many projects are constantly coming up at all levels and sectors. It is a good practice because it offers the companies the opportunity to have face to face meetings to expand their capabilities to collaborate with other companies to be more competitive and sustainable, improving the value chains.