Annotation:

The Danube region is very fragmented and presents great disparities among some of the most advance and most poor regions in EU. In many countries, SMEs despite been an engine of growth (e.g. they contribute to 70% to GDP only in Romania) have to struggle with an unfriendly business environment and the lack of support infrastructure for small businesses, thus being not able to internationalize their businesses. Additionally, the unemployment rates in some countries are still very high (Croatia 15,1%, Slovakia 10,3 %, Bulgaria 7.4%) while the share of highly educated people is lower than the EU 28% average. This scenario forces the most talented to go abroad. Next to this, the lack of entrepreneurship culture within the traditional learning model strongly impacts on the capacity of the Danube Regions to create new businesses with growth prospects.

DA-SPACE addresses these challenges by piloting an open innovation lab in which SMEs, PA and the civil society, can create fundaments for innovation together with young talents. Within this space, the cooperation among different stakeholders on a national and transnational level will generate new solutions and raise the entrepreneurial skills of all the actors involved.

DA-SPACE addresses the missing link between great ideas of young innovators and sustainable business creation. In a free open innovation lab these talents find support, mentors, and education to turn ideas into real innovations. Together with experts from industry and the service sectors concrete business models will be created and implemented either in new or existing SMEs. DA-SPACE fosters a sustainable innovative ecosystem in the Danube Region by developing a network among innovation stakeholders as universities, SMEs, public authorities and business sector able to produce positive effect on the local context and be a role model for further initiatives.

Project objective:

The main objective of DA-SPACE is to pilot innovative tools and frameworks to stimulate open innovation and the implementation of new ideas, while boosting the cooperation amongst innovators from different application and technology domains. The results emerging from the pilot will lead to the development of strategy to boost innovation and entrepreneurship in the Danube.

Referring to the identified challenges, specific objectives of the DA-SPACE project are:

• RAISE ENTREPRENEURIAL SKILLS AND REDUCE BRAIN DRAIN: DA-SPACE creates on the one hand a structure to boost the interaction between innovators (academic and business) and talents from the regions, and on the other hand a framework to teach and raise entrepreneurial skills and to guide talents in transferring innovative ideas to the market. This is achieved by providing talents with a set of personalized services (as the lab, the Entrepreneurship training and the mentoring support). By doing so, DA-SPACE aims to generate new jobs opportunities in the Danube regions, offering valuable alternatives to highly qualified people that would otherwise look for jobs abroad.
• DEVELOP COMMON FRAMEWORK AND TOOL FOR OPEN INNOVATION: In Danube region small businesses still suffer from a lack of support initiatives and infrastructures and are still not benefitting from open innovation approaches in order to expand and internationalize their business. DA-SPACE wish to pilot innovative tools for open innovation in the lab. By doing so, the project extends the circle of classical innovator actors and fosters - via transnational actions - the cross-disciplinary links between relevant players such as decision makers, SMEs, Universities, R&D institutions and finally creates a functioning innovation ecosystem.
• SUPPORT MUTUAL LEARNING AND COOPERATION TO INCREASE SKILLS OF EMPLOYEES AND EMPLOYERS TO BETTER ADAPT TO TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AND MARKET REQUIREMENT: The innovation ecosystem generated by DA-SPACE benefits both seekers (SMEs, Universities, PA) and solvers (young talents). Building up cross-disciplinary networks and joint transnational actions, also the employees of companies involved in the lab can profit from a transnational exchange and enhance job qualifications and competences needed in future. Around the DA-SPACE labs, the project generates an innovation environment that – while fostering entrepreneurial skills of young talents – promotes a learning and socially innovative cultures in local SMEs.
• EXPAND COOPERATION INITIATIVE IN THE WHOLE DANUBE AREA AND SET THE BASIS FOR SUSTAINABILITY: DA-SPACE aims to develop common framework and tool for innovation that can be extended in the whole Danube Area. Therefore, the project will transfer the lab model to other Danube areas, linking the projects results to sustainable international networks. To ensure the sustainability of the labs key stakeholders will be involved in an early stage to assure a sustainable business model operation after the end of funding

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.

The team from Technical University of Sofia:

The Technical University of Sofia team involved in the project is from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and is headed by Prof. Dr. Lubomir Dimitrov, members: Prof. Dr. Milka Vicheva, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pancho Tomov, Senior Assistant Professor Dr. Vladislav Ivanov, PhD student Kiril Nikolov, and others.

The consortium:

Project Partners are:

More information:

DA-SPACE web site: http://www.interreg-danube.eu/approved-projects/da-space