Is the ideal innovation environment possible at all?

The environment where innovations can boost can be made-up of many elements including how well different actors are connected with each other, are the right policies in place, and what is the quality of the talent pool. EIT Health InnoStars leads the cross-industry project that helps emerging regions nourish their innovation potential.

Building innovative nations is a dream of many. Even though there is no one-size-fits-all recipe, the three elements are repeated to bring this into reality: education, entrepreneurship, and enabling policies. In 2020 six Knowledge and Innovations Communities of the European Institute of Innovations and Technology launched a Joint Innovation Incubator, a programme that aims to advance the local universities incubators results.

“Still too many ideas stuck in the researchers’ drawers. We want to change that. The Joint Innovation Incubator collects best practices from six innovation communities: EIT Health, EIT Food, EIT Manufacturing, EIT Raw Materials, EIT Urban Mobility, Climate-KIC. Then we transfer them to universities and incubators in a wide range of countries: Slovakia, Serbia, Portugal, Slovenia, Poland and Estonia. This is invaluable and first-hand support that can result in a higher rate of ideas transferred to the market, decrease the rejection rate and stimulate regions, where the pace of innovations is more moderate to work on innovation environment more strategically”, explains Dora Marosvölgyi, Director, Cross-KIC Strategic Regional Innovations at EIT Health InnoStars and the programme manager.

The project started in 2020 with a one-year concept phase, followed by a one-year implementation period. Together with the representatives of the six EIT Communities, the participating university incubators will summarize the result of their cooperation to a handbook on incubation that will be made publicly available. In 2022, the programme will expand further and train 21 Hubs and local incubators in the region to provide coaching and follow-up care  innovators and start-ups – this way our support activities will be multiplied. We are planning to train a total of 200 individuals and organizations in 2022.