Enterprise creation, development, growth and innovation are central issues to EU policy. They are identified as a key to promote economic recovery and competitiveness of European regions.
7 partners from Italy, Hungary, Ireland, Slovenia and Spain have launched the TRINNO project – “Business ecosystem for Tradition and Innovation”. The partnership is led by the Arezzo Innovazione from Italy. The 5 year project (April 2016 - March 2021) was approved within the Interreg Europe programme financed by the European Regional Development Fund. Interreg Europe programme helps regional and local governments across Europe to develop and deliver better policy.
The TRINNO project promotes competitiveness in European regions by improving policy instruments for business support systems. Improvements focus on the application of digital innovation (products and process) in regional economies, specifically in their traditional sectors.
The kick-off meeting of the TRINNO project took place from 30th – 31th May 2016 in Barcelona, hosted by Barcelona Entrepreneurship Institute of University of Barcelona. Partners were learning about the Barcelona Business Support Ecosystem and visited Barcelona Scientific Park and Barcelona Activa facilities including the start-up incubator. Barcelona Activa is the Barcelona City Council Economic Development agency with 30 years expertise in the field of innovation, entrepreneurship and support to start-up creation. Partners also visited the new MediaTic start-up house and learned about training to promote entrepreneurship in Barcelona and Catalonia, offering entrepreneurs tools to develop their project, including business design, business plan preparation and how to obtain finacial support. Partners also met with some entrepreneurs (companies Ordesa and FAE) and with the people in charge of actions carried out to support local enterprises and new firms such are start-ups within the Barcelona and Catalan Ecosystem. They met with representatives from Government of Catalonia (Generalitat de Catalunya) and learned about their public agency ACCIO for the competitiveness of the Catalan companies and entrepreneurship promotion programme Catalunya Emprem.
TRINNO partners attended the BIZ Barcelona event on 1st and 2nd June 2016 which focus on entrepreneurship promotion, start-up creation and growth. In the last two years it has also included a branch for SMEs innovation and internationalization.
The TRINNO kick-off meeting started a process of interregional exchange on creation of business support ecosystems in all TRINNO regions. Project TRINNO aims to identify the necessary components of business ecosystems in participating regions, to identify specific ecosystem components necessary to promote digital innovation in the local economy and define measures in the Regional Action Plan to introduce or develop these components.
The results will be achieved mainly thanks to 9 participative Interregional Learning events further investigated during 4 Staff exchanges. Initial content for it will be created through 2 good practices shared (Barcelona Business Support Ecosystem and Tuscany traditional-innovation programmes). Collected knowledge will enable project to contribute to EU external policy learning by organizing 2 international events: mid-term event in Szeged, Hungary and final conference in Arezzo, Italy. Partners will be working closely with local political and technical stakeholders creating local stakeholder groups which will be maintained as part of the business ecosystem.
