Nordhessen on its way to create new project ideas

Nordhessen on its way to create new project ideas

During the previous year, the SCALE UP consortium held several international study visits. On top of that, Regionalmanagement Nordhessen GmbH held a virtual co-creation workshop in December with stakeholders from the region. Throughout the study visits, there was a productive exchange of questions and answers. All study visits were very interesting and functioned to get more in-depth insights from the stakeholders. As Regionalmanagement Nordhessen, we learned more about the scale-up-ecosystem in the different regions. The stakeholder workshop which followed in December was then guided by three questions: 1.) What did we learn from the other regions and which Best Practices are relevant for Nordhessen?; 2.) Which new approaches are emerging from this?; 3.) How do we want to continue working together? Hence, in February of this year, the peer reviews followed to pre-select a Best Practice to transfer to our region. For the Peer Reviews, we selected the following Best Practices:

• INNOVATION ACCELERATOR (Murcia)
• THE BIG HOUSE ACCELERATOR PROGRAMME (Nottingham)
• OPEN INNOVATION CHALLENGE (Lazio Innova)

These initiatives were selected on the basis of the above-mentioned questions and discussions.

MoWiN Innovation Lab

During the peer review process, the MoWiN Innovation Lab was well received by the other partners. A few project partners are now considering implementing the MoWiN Innovation Lab practice in their region. The objective of the MoWiN Innovation Lab is to identify cooperative R&D projects through targeted networking between companies and the university to increase R&D activities.

Creating new project ideas for Nordhessen

In the succeeding process to create new project ideas for Nordhessen helping SMEs to scale up, we identified the following formats and topics as relevant, taking into account current developments. As formats, we identified the following: Mentoring network/Peer-to-Peer Mentoring, Accelerator, Open Innovation, joint R&D projects and Innovation Labs. Furthermore, these topics were identified as relevant: Sustainability and Green deal, Digital Transformation, Economic Recovery, Resilience of companies and employees, Shortage of skilled workers and thus Recruiting and further Training and Qualification of employees, Organizational Development and Corporate Culture (Diversity and Inclusion), and Internationalization. Finally, we wanted to link our results back to the concrete and current needs of SMEs and therefore implemented a survey targeting SMEs. This survey is still ongoing and we are awaiting the results to continue the project development process.