Re-opening industrial sites preparatory action – Promoting a sustainable strategy for Europe’s industrial future (CSA)

European innovation policy must place a greater emphasis on promoting innovation in less-developed regions to trigger economic recovery in regions the local economies and societies suffered from the recent closing down of industrial plants and sites, which had once offered lots of jobs in these regions and has thus ensured a level of prosperity for the local population.

Aiming at achieving a sustainable and inclusive industrial transformation, Europe needs to develop new industrial policies relaunching productivity growth in regions suffering most from COVID-19 and economic situations of radical change. This will also help to achieve a competitive social market economy in Europe that seeks to guarantee a balance in living standards and economic conditions between urban and rural areas as well as regions.

The objective of this coordination and support action is to analyse the industrial ecosystem of more than 20 regions in Europe and how they could be influenced by comprehensive industrial policies, innovation programs, private investments accompanied with modern regional administration policies and public investment in infrastructures, both digital and transportation. Focus is both, on the growth of the digital industries, and on the transformation of traditional industries and the creation of new business opportunities that could offer the potential for a long term value creation and for new jobs.

The coordination and support action should network the stakeholders across entire innovation value-chains and regional development programs. A holistic approach is needed, mobilizing a diverse set of players from private and public organisations. The translation of an industrial revitalization into integrated business development solutions across disciplines should be envisaged and sustainable and inclusive regional-specific business development strategies should be proposed to be taken up. In particular, the key actors in the region, who have a “gravitational pull” should play a key role should be identified and involved.

The interplay between large companies and the start-up scene, authorities and financial organisations are important success factor for a region. The strength of the industrial innovation ecosystem should be summarised by characteristics such as robustness, diversity in particular in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, cross-fertilisation between sectors, large and small companies spurring the ecosystem, entrepreneurial culture, well connected across the world, openness to disruption, platform-economy, supportive state, public procurement and education and acceptance by the local population.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement