TII

Innovation Coach update

The Innovation Coach project led by Meta Group (I) and involving TII and EURADA as partners is due to finish at the end of November 2007. Most of the TII members who were selected as experts have carried out their mission in the 16 NAC regions to help the regional authorities to implement the different action strands of their Regional Innovation Strategy.

As part of the programme of “horizontal actions” TII organised a first “speed dating” event in the Westin hotel in Warsaw on 6 July. The purpose of such an event is to maximise the number of opportunities for partner identification with a view to developing long-term collaboration (business and research joint ventures) between innovation support players in selected RIS NAC regions (in this case Silesia, West Pomerania, Wielkopolska, Warmia and Mazury and Latvia) and representatives from innovation support organisations from across the European Union. Forty participants in total took part in the event, and based on the 18 evaluation forms returned by the participants, some 49 promising contacts or manifestations of interest were reported.

A number of recommendations made by participants have been acted upon in the lead-up to the second “speed dating” event that took place on 8-9 November at the Hotel Gellért in Budapest. The event started in the afternoon of the 8^th and continued till lunchtime on the 9^th. In addition, the profiles of the “home team” (including organisations from 4 Hungarian regions, West Romania, South Central Bulgaria, Slovenia, Prague/Pilsen, Slovakia, and Cyprus) were posted on the TII and Innovation Coach websites in advance of the event so that visitors were able to obtain a preview of who they can expect to meet.