Policy-makers define local or regional competence by excellence in innovation. But what is it exactly and why are strategies to define this so important?

The challenge is to specialize on future-oriented fields and major factors of influence for economic growth and competitiveness. This encompasses much more than research and development – it requires technological, social and creative competency embedded in a unrestricted innovation culture. And it is a highly interactive process of collaboration across a diverse network of stakeholders.

And that, precisely, is our job: we will accompany you in finding and specifying your best innovation strategy within an inclusive and interdisciplinary consensus-building process.

Almost every state or region in Europe prefers cluster policies as a supporting element of its economic development strategy. However, there are limits to such a policy in terms of management and control.

We are at your disposal concerning the following topics: optimizing cluster potentials and structures, adapting cluster policy to additional regional innovation potentials, ensuring long-term cluster and business funding, monitoring and evaluation of cluster policy.

“Smart specialisation” has been emphasized by the European Commission as a key principle within their Europe 2020 strategy. This concept requires an entrepreneurial discovery process to generate the necessary information about the value of future domains of research and innovation. The building of capabilities is meant as a process organized in collaboration of all key actors. It leads to a concentration of resources, higher proximity to market and significance for the regional economy.

We will help you to meet all requirements for your specific smart specialization strategy.

Startups, especially those with ideas based on new technologies, have a positive influence on a country´s or region´s economic growth. So within our consultancy activities particular emphasis is placed on “startup promotion”.

There are often existing initiatives and framework programs for promotion and facilitation of business startups. We are able to design further actions for a targeted support of startup environments, the development of startup initiatives or infrastructure projects (such us technology, business and incubator centres).

Key topics - besides technology-oriented companies - are projects supporting “social entrepreneurs” and startups in cultural and creative industries.