Rural RDI milieus in transition towards smart Bioeconomy Clusters and Innovation Ecosystems

October 2017 -
September 2020

Uncompleted

EUSBSR flagship

Policy area:
Bioeconomy – Agriculture, forestry and fisheries

1. Innovation 1.2 Smart specialisation

RDI2CluB

The goal of the project is to support smart, sustainable and inclusive growth of the bioeconomy in rural areas of the Baltic Sea region. RDI2CluB aims to help innovation actors apply EU smart specialisation approaches to their specific field and region. The transnational partnership and network of the project plans to, for instance, support new business development in rural areas and create bio-business hubs to improve innovation management.

Summary

Our mission

Bioeconomy means economic activities that utilize the biological natural resources and turn them into food, energy, and other products and services providing jobs and business opportunities. The rural areas of Baltic Sea region have a great potential for bioeconomy as they have abundant natural resources. However, these regions struggle to reach their full potential due to limited human capital, business networks and clusters. So far, the small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in bioeconomy are mostly in traditional, resource-based industries that have not taken full advantage of latest technology and service innovations.

Our solution

RDI2CluB unites authorities, research, development and innovation (RDI) institutes and business development bodies from five regions to a joint quest of boosting smart and sustainable bioeconomy development in the rural regions around the Baltic Sea. At the core of RDI2CluB is a transnational learning process that results in regional bioeconomy profiles and joint action plans for developing innovation capacity and enhancing smart specialization. Thereafter, the partner regions build a joint innovation model and a digital platform that functions as a virtual working environment for collaborative development of new products and services. The platform offers an interface to access data on natural resources and bioeconomy potential that can spark new ideas and market entries both at regional and transnational levels. Finally, piloting with the SMEs provides feedback on the smart specialization potential in bioeconomy as well as helps to validate the usability and functionality of the transnational innovation model and to scale up the digital platform.

Highlights by mid-term:

The project has mapped five regions in Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Norway and Poland to develop their bioeconomy profiles and benchmarks for bioeconomy development. Based on that, the project partners elaborated on the action plans for each region presenting the biggest potential and promising interfaces for bioeconomy products, related services and knowledge-based jobs.

The collected data from mapping and action plans fed into the prototype of a webtool called the Biobord platform, the testing of which started in April 2019 and shall involve small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) from all the regions. The platform aims to connect bioeconomy innovation networks around the Baltic Sea to share ideas and work together to create business opportunities in bioeconomy. It is a place to find partners and get support from the network behind the Biobord.