On 23 and 24 April 2018, the city of Zadar, Croatia, hosted the official Kick-off Meeting of the BLUE_BOOST project. Seven project partners from Croatia, Italy, Greece and Albania gathered to launch this 22-month project co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Interreg ADRION Programme.
The project aims at boosting the innovation potential of the blue economy, SMEs and start-ups belonging to the involved Adriatic-Ionian regions, through innovative and creative cooperation with the 'new innovation agents'. The project offers innovative coaching opportunities for the blue sector companies on how to innovate and achieve blue growth. Selected companies shall also be awarded with innovation vouchers of up to 10.000 EUR for the implementation of an innovation process within their company, together with an innovation coach guiding them through this process.
The project, therefore, also represents an opportunity for blue growth innovation experts and the non-institutional 'new innovation agents' to promote and offer their expertise and innovation coaching services in a transnational context. These Knowledge Providers will be selected by the awarded companies to guide their innovation process and will thus be the actual financial beneficiaries of the project's innovation vouchers. In the next weeks, a Call for the expression of interest for interested companies and Knowledge Providers respectively shall be launched on the project's website.
The CEI’s role in the project is two-fold: to implement the project pilot actions in the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region; to lead the project communications.
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