Ten Pilot Regional Innovation Partnership Projects

A major component of the EU-DRIVERS project is the involvement of ten Pilot regional innovation partnership projects.  The projects will provide a core base for practical knowledge sharing about routes to improving regional cooperation between universities, public authorities (local/regional government) and business or community organizations to encourage regional innovation. Lessons from the pilot projects will form the basis for development of good practice guides and development of a sustainable leadership development programme for relevant stakeholders at the regional level.

These ten pilot ‘showcase’ projects, involving the triple helix stakeholders from a university, public authority (local/regional government) and business or community organization will be developed. Each pilot project will be a working example of how the three stakeholders are coming together to create a major impact on a key aspect of the regional economic or social infrastructure, addressing a major regional need.  Projects will be varied in terms of sector and geographical areas.

Four two-day leadership workshops will be aimed at developing participants’ leadership and boundary-spanning skills through practical knowledge-sharing regarding the show case projects. They will explore all of the elements involved in making regional cooperation work – including issues such as motivators and barriers  to cooperation, strategy (regional and organisational), leadership, governance and funding.

State-of the art Knowledge on Regional Innovation

Three Annual Reports on the latest knowledge on innovation issues will be produced, based on desk research, relevant literature review and gathering of example of good practices from within and beyond the partnership. These annual reports will serve as the basic material for the conferences.

Three Conferences on Regional innovation

The project will organize three conferences which will serve as a common gathering where mutual learning and trust can be developed between all regional actors from universities (deans), private companies and regional governments on the basis of specific issues where action can be taken to advance regional innovation. These conferences will take stock on the regional innovation partnership projects and will have the state-of-the-art reports as their starting point. They will link to EU policy and instruments.