Driving Innovation Transfer in Europe through Partnerships

A large consortium of European partners has kicked-off their Knowledge Alliance project last week during a two day meeting in Amsterdam. They’ve started their work on “SMEs and HEIs in Innovation Partnerships”,  to strengthen the knowledge triangle and build sustainable collaborative relationships between higher education institutions, SMEs and innovation support organisations.

UIIN and its partners will work on creating 4 territorial innovation alliances involving around about 100 stakeholders from 5 countries. In addition, they’ll develop an open access, digital learning resource for SMEs in order to train them in the skills for engaging in innovation transfer between HEIs and Horizon 2020 projects. As well as developing a Multimedia Case Study Guide for Innovation Transfer to present effective solutions for transferring research from HEIs to SMEs.

The project will consolidate cooperation as a key feature of the knowledge economy, reshaping traditional roles by multiplying outlets for HEIs to generate direct economic impact from their work, and breaking down barriers so SMEs of all types can actively implement academic-based innovation to boost their competitiveness, and that of the wider economy.

This Knowledge Alliance Project is funded by the European Commission, DG Education and Culture, involves 8 partners from 7 countries and will run for a two year period.