Interregional Deeptech and Photonics Support Network for Manufacturing

Project Information

Deepsupport

Grant agreement ID: 101134885

DOI

10.3030/101134885

Project closed

EC signature date 10 November 2023

Start date 1 January 2024

End date 31 December 2024

Funded under

• European innovation ecosystems

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 497 566,85

Coordinated by

JOANNEUM RESEARCH FORSCHUNGSGESELLSCHAFT MBH
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Deepsupport (Interregional Deeptech and Photonics Support Network for Manufacturing)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2024-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

In recent years the manufacturing sector has been one of the stable pillars of European economic growth and therefore prosperity. Photonics, as one of the advanced technologies for industry identified by the European Union, is a relevant deep technology that plays a key role in supporting and innovating the manufacturing ecosystem. On the European landscape several initiatives exist that facilitate cooperation on Photonics, ranging from the public private partnership Photonics21, to European wide clusters like EPIC association and the Digital innovation hub Photonhub Europe. However, they focus mainly on support for individual organisations and while there is also the S3 platform partnership on Photonics, there is no support available to coordinate interregional cooperation in deeptech with the focus on Photonics for manufacturing.
Goal of the project is the establishment of an interregional deeptech innovation support network for manufacturing with the focus on Photonics. Output will be a joint supra-regional strategy with best-practice measures for the use of Deeptech/Photonics to support European missions and company competitiveness. This strategy will be co-developed by relevant regional stakeholders from the government body, research, industry and makers communities and include tangible steps to use the complementarities and cooperation potential of the regions to ensure cross-fertilisation.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Deepsupport engaged a large portion of regional quadruple stakeholder - In total 126 stakeholder were involved in co-creating the regional strategies to support the dissemination of Deeptech in manufacturing SME. These stakeholders were engaged through workshops and interviews giving them many opportunities to bring their point of view into the developed strategies. Moreover, through this first contact, these relevant regional representatives learned about their own capabilities in Photonics and Deeptech in their own local ecosystem. This leveraged new connection within the region, but also inter-regional within the Deepsupport regions. Especially the policy makers learned about the innovation potential that the transfer of Deeptech into manufacturing SME has. On top of it the tailored analysis of the respective region's economic structure including SWOT analysis towards Deeptech offered pointers for further strategic cooperation. The regional analysis together with other guides on ecosystem building, like for example the guideline to quadruple helix stakeholder engagement are public available as knowledge assets. However, the main output are the main strategy and the 5 regional strategies that sum up all the work in a way that is easier to understand but still refers to the in-depth analysis that was done.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The found communalities within the regions also already led to further cooperation, among other things the consortium applied for a joint proposal under the call “I3-2023-Cap2b”. But of course the main output was to set up the stage for a regional innovation valley application in the topic of Photonics and deeptech. In that sense, the consortium gathered a lot of support from the respective regional stakeholders and build connection to the regional authorities. This is also formalized with Letters of intend and letters of endorsement. On top of this the analysis of the regions together with the joint and regional strategies will be the basis for the activities of a joint regional innovation valley.