From May 27th until May 29th, the second TraCS3 project meeting took place in Bremen.
Day one started in Bremen’s House of Science with the Steering Committee meeting in the morning, followed by the partnership meeting workshop „Regional Innovation Infrastructures, Interregional Cooperation, and Policy Implications“ in the afternoon.
34 participants – partners and stakeholders from all regions – were welcomed and given an introduction to Bremen’s innovation strategy by Kai Stührenberg from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labour and Ports, Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. The project partners presented results from their in-depth-surveys on the innovation landscapes in their regions. Over all regions, the most often a need for policy measures was stated for issues of financing and connectivity/cooperation. Diederik Declercq from the Province of West Flanders provided an overview on the outcomes of the World Café discussions that took place in Bruges during the last partnership meeting, focusing on questions regarding the usage of innovation infrastructures: how can usage of innovation infrastructure be improved and under-booking be prevented? The interregional cooperation and the attraction of new users from other regions were identified as possible solutions. To take discussions further, the question of which policy measures should be taken to support interregional cooperation was re-addressed during the workshop in Bremen.
Agatha Filimon from North-East Romania's Regional Development Agency and Willem Foorthuis from Hanze University of Applied Sciences, NL, provided input on the possibility to design a new /improved policy measure and instruments to establish the interregional collaboration fund, with one starting point for the development of new policy measures being Article 70 of European Regulation No 1303/2013. Discussions were continued at the evening networking event.
The second day, May 28th, included site visits in Bremen’s Technology Park. The partners and stakeholders visited the BIBA - Bremen Institute for Production and Logistics GmbH and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence GmbH (DFKI GmbH). The second part of the day was spent in Bremerhaven, where the partners learned about the activities in Bremerhaven‘s Technology-Transfer-Centre and about the study course “Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Leadership”, held by Prof. Michael Vogel at the University of Applied Sciences Bremerhaven.
On Wednesday, May 29th, the partners and stakeholders had the opportunity to visit the EcoMaT - Center for Eco-efficient Materials & Technologies which opened just recently on April 26th. The EcoMat offers about 22.000 square meters of space for laboratories, technical equipment, and offices, and facilitates direct cooperation between companies and scientific institutions. In the closing discussion, the partners discussed their impressions on the site visits and drew conclusions regarding potentials for the innovation infrastructures in their regions. The project partners agreed on next steps and defined tasks in preparation of the next partnership meeting.
We would like to thank all partners and stakeholders for taking part in the meeting, for their contributions and fruitful discussions. Also we would like to thank all organizations we visited for the highly interesting insights into their innovation activities.
We believe we have brought the project another step forward and are looking forward to the next partnership meeting in Tampere, Finland in October!
