View at Danube river from the city of Ruse, Bulgaria

The Danube region is still very fragmented and presents great disparities in prosperity, jobs opportunities and innovation capacities. DA-SPACE addresses these challenges by piloting a model of open innovation lab in which companies, public authorities, universities and the civil society can create fundaments for innovation together with young talents. The DA-SPACE labs promote a cross-disciplinary and transnational cooperation among different stakeholders able to generate new solutions and nurture the entrepreneurial skills of all the actors involved.

The project will pilot 7 open innovation labs in 7 regions: here seekers (public authorities, universities, companies, young talents) will define a challenge that will be addressed by solvers (young talents) on a transnational level. Through co-creation methods, young talents will develop new solutions and business ideas within the lab and they will furthermore benefit from an entrepreneurship training. The exchange among these actors in the DA-SPACE labs will profit both sides:

• young talents will work on real business cases and will be able to test and prototype their ideas in a safe environment, acquiring entrepreneurial skills;
• seekers (e.g. small and medium-sized enterprises, public authorities etc.) will test co-creation and open innovation methods and will benefit from the exchange with young innovators. Besides, their employees – involved as mentors in the lab - will improve their business competences responding to market requirements and developing skills for future job needs.

The results from the pilots will serve to define a transnational strategy to boost innovation and entrepreneurship in the Danube region that will be declined in regional actions plan. All knowledge acquired in DA-SPACE will be transferred to up to 4 further Danube regions through transferability workshops. The consortium will also define a sustainability strategy to finance the lab after the end of funding, taking into consideration public-private-partnership, sponsorship or national/European funds.