Next Generation European DIH Network

Project Information

DIHNET.EU

Grant agreement ID: 825640

DOI

10.3030/825640

Project closed

EC signature date 30 October 2018

Start date 1 November 2018

End date 31 October 2021

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 997 812,49

EU contribution

€ 997 812,49

Coordinated by

NEDERLANDSE ORGANISATIE VOOR TOEGEPAST NATUURWETENSCHAPPELIJK ONDERZOEK TNO
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DIHNET.EU (Next Generation European DIH Network)

Reporting period: 2020-05-01 to 2021-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Digital Innovation Hubs have become the national and European instrument to speed up digitization in SMEs/MidCaps to ensure the EU’s future industrial leadership. Most EU Member States DIHs have established, in a growing number of regions and sectors, complemented by regional and national networks. The European Commission is also deploying a vast number of initiatives to support DIH activities. The next step is to build a pan EU network that coordinates and integrates this wide variety of initiatives and ensure collaboration and quality. DIHNET.EU just does that: build a network of networks involving hubs, competence centres, and regional and national programmes and infrastructures.

The aim of the project is to enhance the pan-European collaboration within the EU DIH community and support discussion and alignment among the community to identify synergies. The main target audience of the DIHNET project is the EU-networks that are already active and trying to support EU-wide collaboration. This includes mainly the CSAs, IAs, and relevant PPPs. These actors can be seen as the channels and multipliers who then can disseminate the relevant information to the individual DIHs and even SMEs.

The DIHNET.EU project overall objectives are:
• To enhance the collaboration between the different stakeholders from the European DIH Community with a wide information and tools and online platform that will help DIHs to communicate, align, collaborate, and synchronize activities.
• To coordinate the upgrade of the DIH Catalogue by identifying/activating activities in the DIH Community in coherence with regional, national and EU policies.
• To stimulate cooperation, discussion, and development of common mind-set in the ecosystem of DIHs and networks by initiating the thinking and exchange of views along selected strategic topics and the Thought Leadership approach.
• To support the creation of a vision and strategy for the EU DIH community and its future.

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

The main project progress and achievements include:
• The Digital Innovation Hubs community has been active and strongly engaged in the webinars and working groups. Creating fruitful discussions and producing recommendations for policy makers and other DIHs, and specific content for dissemination materials. DIHNET has established a regular connection to various DIH networks, projects, and stakeholders – discussing, aligning, and sharing information with each other.
• The DIHNET community platform has been successfully launched in February 2019 and already gathers more than 1600 members. It has become the central online place for DIHs to get the latest news about their ecosystem and to attend online events.
• A DIH Maturity Assessment was developed and launched under the form of the European DIH Champions Challenge which successfully run two editions. The winners – the Digital Innovation Hub Logistics from Dortmund (2019 winner) and the the am-LAB (Hungary) and the Basque Digital Innovation Hub (Spain) (the winners in 2020) - have illustrated and shared good practices with the community.
• Management of the Digital Innovation Hubs Catalogue is still challenging. At this moment the added value of DIHNET is easily seen with regard to the quality of the entries. To support the Catalogue work, guidelines to update and upgrade the Catalogue with a special focus on the need to boost collaboration among DIHs and networking towards a pan-European network of DIHs have been developed.
• Since December 2019, the work in the WP4 has refocused on developing the Thought Leadership Approach as well as initiating it with a few selected topics. We see the Thought Leadership programme as a joined collaboration with other EU-networks. Based on this approach working papers and online webinar discussions with the community have been developed.
• To create a vision on the collaboration among EDIHs, in 2020 the DIHNET established an open, informal precursor EDIH network with other 60 initiatives. As a result of the discussions the precursor network submitted an advice on the future needs and collaboration in the EDIH network.
The DIH community had the opportunity to meet (virtually) and discuss the upcoming EDIH strategy at the first European Digital Innovation Hub (EDIH) conference - EDIH Gearing up towards European Digital Innovation Hubs conference – which took place on 26-27 January 2021 and accounted for 30 different sessions, more than 100 speakers and on average 1500 participants per plenary session. The conference was jointly organised by the European Commission, Luxinnovation, the Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy and DIHNET.

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)

• Creation of a sustainable network:
The connection with key stakeholders in the EU DIH community has been established. The communication events contributed to creating the DIHNET brand. We see this brand not as a brand for the project, but a brand that acts as one of the mechanisms to create a common vision towards the future of the EU DIH community. The activities during our precursor network (some 100 active participants) showed that the members of the community can work together to create a common understanding towards the Commission. The participation on the DIHNET platform (1600 members) and active participation on social networks show that a growing community building has been created. The activities during the other though leadership activities also created further mass with regard to creating a common view on the EU DIH community (“Future of the EU DIH community”, “Building blocks”, “Post project sustainability”, “Precursor network advise”). These also offered an opportunity to work together cross-network. The Champion Challenge has raised awareness towards good practices in the ecosystem, thus also inspiring the community.
• Reinforced links with other bottom-up initiatives: The work on the catalogue and significant increase in its collection showed that we further developed the connection with DIHs and other actors at large. Also, the joined development of the thought leadership activities with other Innovation Actions, Coordination Support Actions and other networks like EEN shows that the collaboration between these EU-networks is important. The DIHNET platform played an important role in creating these gateways (e.g. the newsletters and periodic emails).
• Increased number of services and applications: We enabled others to create those messages to industry and other stakeholders.
• Enhancing the sustainable European collaboration between the different DIHs, both on providing access to the different capacities and capabilities of the regions, as well as enabling the learning between them:
We believe that DIHNET has contributed to pave the way to establishing the EDIH network as well as creating a view on responsibilities alignment in the future. The precursor network included many participants that will likely become an EDIH and prepared their collaboration. Also, DIHNET prepared a momentum in the community that can be taken over by the DTA with regard to branding and activated interest of the future EDIHs. The platform, thought leadership activities and precursor network has contributed and can be seen as an important impact of our project. The DIH catalogue support to collect and support the update of the information about DIHs in EU27 and further, as well as providing suggestions for future improvements.

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