Ljubljana, 16 November 2017 – To improve the general innovation power of the area with a close cooperation among players of the crossboarder innovation ecosystem is among the goals of the CAB Project (Crossborder Acceleration Bridge). Financed by the Interreg V-A Italy-Slovenia 2014-2020 Programme, the project was officially launched in October 2017 and was also introduced to both public and key interested parties.
Romina Kocina from the Interreg V-A Italy-Slovenia Programme’s Joint Secretary congratulated the partners for the effort put into the preparation of the project and for obtaining the funds. The CAB Project is one of only eight selected among 62 on 1b priority level and from a total of 160 application submitted. She also underlined this wonderful achievement for which expectations are very high, expressing the need to collaborate with other selected projects to coordinate them, which is exactly what the Joint Secretary office will promote.
Claudia Baracchini from Friuli innovazione, the project’s lead partner, introduced their main goal: to conceive and test a business acceleration model based on crossboarder cooperation. The project targets start-ups, scale-ups as well as innovative small and medium enterprises. Included in the partnership there are three major universities of the programme area, two business incubators/accelerators, one chamber of commerce and two innovative enterprises. The project will see evolve two pilot phases, with ten companies on each stage and a total of twenty businesses which will have the opportunity to test the crossboarder acceleration model.
Aleš Pustovrh (ABC Accelerator) spoke about the challenges both economies face and the opportunities offered to companies. The world is changing, and new global value chains are created thanks to smart specialisation strategies. Similarly, innovation processes are gradually becoming more open through various open innovation models. To start-ups, the Italian-Slovenian combination seems extremely appealing. Slovenia offers the perfect environment for testing different business and marketing approaches, whereas Italy is the best scaleup country in which prepare the companies to develop on an international scale, Pustovrh added. This are in fact the qualities the CAB Project shall take advantage of when creating and preparing the new business acceleration model.
Watch the video made by the TV of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia.
Operation co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund
