Innovative platform for green business
As sustainability becomes a global priority, eco-innovation is rising in Europe, but the transfer of this progress to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is lagging behind. The EU-funded project 'EcoWeb a dynamic e-dissemination platform for EU eco-innovation research results' (ECOWEB) enhanced technology transfer across the continent. The project established a common platform to speed dissemination and transfer of eco-innovative solutions, increasing their uptake and encouraging economic growth. In particular, the project helped SMEs exploit eco-innovation results emerging from EU-funded research. It built the EcoWeb portal to bring companies together with eco-innovation networks and multipliers. This involved documenting eco-innovation research and development results, matching them to the technical needs of the SMEs, and bringing innovations to SMEs rather than having the SMEs seek them out. The platform helps facilitate access to EU-funded eco-innovative solutions, including clean technologies, by highlighting them in a novel, dynamic and user-centred online application. It represents a one-stop shop with the latest information on research results, automatically collecting information from the databases of EU funding programmes. To achieve its aims, ECOWEB reached out to more than 700 European multipliers and formed partnerships with many of them, integrating numerous businesses and SMEs in its circle as well. The project's estimated reach was 200 000 stakeholders, while the online platform received more than 15 000 unique visits per year. While the project is now officially over, it has given rise to the powerful EcoWeb portal that today is going strong, providing information on over 3 300 eco-innovations in Europe. These range from products and technologies to applications and processes. The platform continues to help European businesses overcome barriers like limited access to external information and knowledge, lack of suitable business partners and lacklustre research cooperation with academic organisations. Supported by several events and dissemination activities, it has undoubtedly contributed to making Europe greener, cleaner and more sustainable — and is expected to do so well into the future.
Keywords
Green business, research innovations, eco technologies, sustainability, eco-innovation, e-dissemination platform, research results, technology transfer, economic growth, green technologies
