The Macro-Regional Innovation Week intends to focus on the exchange of best practices and knowledge among local and international policy and decision makers, academics, financial actors and various types of innovation and technology transfer practitioners. The week is intended to facilitate the exchange of views and knowledge among this plethora of stakeholders with a focus on supporting the development of a competitive innovation ecosystem across the macro-regions. These days of seminars and workshops will target contiguous regions that are relevant because of significant historical and economic ties and because of their inclusion in overlapping macro-regional strategies (e.g. Danube Strategy, Adriatic-Ionian Strategy or Alpine Region strategy).

The Macro-Regional Innovation Week will look at different levels of governance and activity including the political, regional and local level.

The week will open with an initial consideration of the political imperatives that need to be attained to support the expansion of a robust innovation and technology commercialisation ecosystem. It will then move on to consider how framework conditions supporting innovation and technology commercialisation can be created at a regional level by applying robust Smart Specialisation Strategies. The role of Science and Technology parks, how best to structure their operation and their interaction with local stakeholders (research infrastructures, local authorities, universities, investors, etc.) will be the focus of a dedicated portion of the forum. The second part of the forum will be focused on trying to address the human capital component of innovation eco-systems through targeted training aimed at addressing a recognised skills gap in the domains of Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property management and marketing and the commercialisation of research results more in general.

Source: JRC