Regional trainings on the crowd innovation strategy (O.T4.5)

SYNERGY regional trainings were organized by each project partner to raise awareness on the Regional Strategy on Crowd Innovation, intended as a ready to adopt Plan of Actions designed to achieve a long-term and overall spread of innovative initiatives at the regional level. The training were mainly addressed to regional public authorities, public organizations and Synergic Networks as the main promoters and initiators of Open Innovation initiatives at the regional level; however, there were also participants from Les, SMEs, NGOs and the general public. Overall, the regional trainings were delivered to 122 regional stakeholder participants.

The main objectives of the Regional Training on Crowd Innovation Strategy were to allow the participants to:

• Raise awareness on new open innovation collaboration mechanisms
• Learn more about new ways to increase Open Innovation initiative in European regions
• Develop new ideas for Open Innovation and technology advancement
• Gain insights into best practices and success stories about open innovation at the regional and European level
• Discover new opportunities for future collaborations in open innovation
• Explore the possibilities of the Synergic Crowd Innovation Platform for future activities 

Thanks to the presentation of best practices and success stories of Open Innovation in Central Europe, such as the Open Innovation strategy in the Emilia-Romagna Region (Italy) and the “breathing strategy” of the Baden-Württemberg State (Germany), the training participants  could have a transnational view of Open Innovation.

Given to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, most of partners run online training activities in the form of webinars, based on common training materials (slides), moreover some of them invited external speakers and lectures for follow-ups on Open Innovation. In all cases, training was delivered together with the SYNERGY promotional meetings to present also the SYNERGY projects and its main outputs including the SYNERGY strategy.

The main impacts and benefits of the Regional Trainings on the Crowd Innovation Strategy were to encourage the adoption of OI initiatives at the regional level as a tool fostering industrial competitiveness and contributing to strengthen the common European space of knowledge and industry excellence which characterizes Central Europe. 

The presented SYNERGY Crowd Innovation Strategy is publicly available and can be shared with all interested parties for use in shaping and expanding Crowd and Open Innovation initiatives at a regional and trans-regional level. The strategy was also translated into the regional languages of the project partners through the materials for the trainings, and the translated versions can be made available on request. 

In the following we provide you with links to all relevant outputs and tools: 

SYNERGY Regional Crowd Innovation Strategy Infographics (English)