The Renewable Materials and Healthy Environments Research and Innovation Centre of Excellence (InnoRenew CoE) addresses issues at both the national and international level. At the national level, the project addresses research and scientific quality, relevance, and applicability issues. Internationally (including in Slovenia), the wider issues addressed are optimising wood utilisation and building construction that emphasises accessibility, adaptability, and positive human health impacts in addition to environmentally sound construction.
Addressing these issues will help Slovenia become a high-performing innovation and research country. Within the country this will lead to greater utilisation of Research Development and Innovation (RD&I) activities within forest sector businesses, which will increase their competitiveness with other European and global firms. Increasing the utilisation of wood through optimising processing, developing new processes (especially related to wood modification), and identifying applications for wood and wood composites will reduce the strain on non-renewable resources and contribute to economic recovery in the forest sector. Producing solutions for better built environments will directly impact society by increasing occupant well-being in buildings, at work, home, school, or elsewhere. Specific targets to increase wellness in buildings are to reduce stress levels, increase recovery from stress (e.g. restoration of depleted physical and psychological resources), improve the ergonomic function of buildings and objects within them (e.g. furniture, safety railing) to protect worker health and allow the elderly to stay at home longer.
The overall strategic objective of the new Centre of Excellence (InnoRenew CoE) is to harness and upgrade the talents and expertise of all collaborators and relevant stakeholders in order to create, improve, and communicate innovative products, processes, services, business models and systems for smart, sustainable and modern built environments for all generations, thus facilitating Slovenia’s transformation into a society focused on sustainability, cyclical economy, human well-being, and use of its renewable resources and assets.
The overall mission of the InnoRenew CoE is to realise its overall objective in close collaboration with and by mentoring from the advanced partner, Fraunhofer WKI, by accomplishing the following specific objectives:
- to create an Innovative Renewable Material Uses living laboratory (LL InnoRenew) in which stakeholders representing industry, consumers, and researchers gathered to collaboratively explore, design and validate themes, opportunities and risks for new innovative renewable material based products, services and systems
- to perform market analysis of consumers and industrial entities identifying opportunities and risks related to the value and innovation chains
- to update the SWOT analysis based on the results of the market analysis
- to identify methods and measures necessary to achieve scientific and innovation excellence
- to prepare a RD&I roadmap to implement the identified methods and measures to achieve scientific and innovation excellence
- to define a long term business plan that meets the stated objectives of the CoE and includes sound financial planning, strategic, operational, and risk management methods, and addresses market needs
- to select metrics, indicators and business intelligence tools to help measure the impacts of the new CoE business model
- to openly share and innovatively disseminate the CSA activities and findings
