The event will take place in the Festetics Palace of the Andrassy Gyula University in Budapest, Hungary.

The overall objective of the Annual Partnering Event (APE) is to provide an 'interactive arena' in which all projects will be able to share experience and generate new ideas on the future development of activities. Key issues for many of the network actions (Financing, Clusters and Standards) include designing an exit strategy to ensure that European funding has a lasting impact. By sharing ideas on these 'exit strategies' and 'result exploitations', the APE event should assist as many of the current projects as possible to finalise their plans for 'life-beyond' Europe INNOVA.

A second key objective will be to foster a debate on what the next generation of Europe INNOVA 'platforms' can learn from the experience of the past three years. Cross-cutting issues arising from the analytical work (Sectoral Innovation Watch, European Cluster Observatory, IMP³rove) will be put in the spotlight alongside the lessons learned from the more practical and operationally focused activities of the various networks.

The APE event is organised over two days, with the second day especially devoted to a thematic workshop on the Europe INNOVA Cluster networks. The thematic workshop will synthesise the benefits and lessons learnt from this approach, thus paving the way to the upcoming cluster development actions under Europe INNOVA, as well as to generic policy recommendations on cluster management. A number of side events such as innovation tours and a gala dinner will be organised on June 2.

For further information:
Márta Völgyiné Nadabán mnadaban@eszakalfold.hu
Senior Manager
INNOVA Észak-Alföld Regional Development and Innovation Agency Nonprofit LTD

Source: IRC Network Newsletter