Go SIV project aims at improving the support provided to SMEs innovation processes by testing and developing a model of innovation ecosystem named “Smart Industrial Villages” (SIV). In specific, the “Smart Industrial Villages” approach refers to a process of renovation of small and medium sized industrial areas located in the suburbs or within urban that were planned according to old models and included both small industrial enterprises and craft activities. Go SIV has the aims to respond to specific needs (renovate the industrial areas; qualify the SMEs located in the area, respond to new criteria of urban quality). It also has the aims to develop and test an innovative model for refurbishment of industrial and craft areas promoting inclusive and participatory processes, the best synergies with public transport, accessibility, commercial and recreational use, activating new «smart» services, proposing forms of circular economy and sustainability. Through this, promoting the functionality of the local areas as innovation ecosystem, new forms of innovation and entrepreneurship in a proactive way as suggested by the call “for a better innovation of SMEs” of the work programme 2016-2017. The project will use the peer learning methodology promoted by the INNOSUP-05-2016-2017 topic, involving different regional development and innovation agencies with complementary expertise about the topics relevant for the “Smart Industrial Villages”. The partners will exchange knowledge and experience, and will develop proper local case studies (obtaining a process of “learning by doing”). The joint work of project partners together with the peer learning will produce a Design Options Paper for the implementation of local initiatives intended to develop a “Smart Industrial Village” and related innovation support services, and will promote an enhancement of the role and the effectiveness of development and innovation agencie as innovation intermediaries as expected by the topic.

The objective of the project is to improve and enhance the innovation support actions, activities and services addressed to Universities and Research Centers (U&RC) Spin-off, by the different entities which aim is creation and support of innovative companies. During 12 months and through the use of Twinning Advance Methodology, the partners seek identify and share best practices based on its experience in entrepreneurship and business development within the knowledge and technology transfer framework. The result will be documented in a Design Option Paper (DOP), which will identify and document implementation options, guidelines and implementation alternatives that we have experienced and would recommend to other innovation support service agencies.

"<< Background >>AGORA Guiers, third place, incubator welcomes since its creation entrepreneurs, young or not so young, recently left the school system, having already matured their professional project in other structures or in reconversion. This population, strongly encouraged by the public authorities, has heard the message: create your own job if you don't want to lose yours. With this experience, AGORA Guiers provides concrete answers and services, but through this project we want to go further by creating an environment that promotes creativity, efficiency, and openness to other practices that will give the partners the tools to make the young generations the actors of change.Thanks to this project, students will experiment and eventually embrace the entrepreneurship posture. By raising their awareness of the qualitative issues of their profession and by allowing them to develop the key skills for entrepreneurship, this project will be a genuine springboard for their professional practice. More broadly, it will allow them to enter more easily into a work organization.In a context of difficult integration into the labor market, we want to raise the students’ awareness about how many possibilities an international perspective can open : regarding their networks and future knowledge of their own jobs.We also want them to realize that everyone is capable of entrepreneurship, of building something starting with just an idea, that their jobs can be creative too. Our goal is for them to eventually gather some knowledge about their own territory, to grasp its particularities.Finally, we want to enrich the vocational training of young people by bringing an international perspective they too rarely benefit from, and showing them tangible applications of what they learn in school.<< Objectives >>The ambition of this project is to disseminate among young students of both vocational and technological schools the spirit and the will to take action on their territories. Surely, we want to give them tools and show them how to do so, but we also aim for broadening their horizons with a European perspectiveThis project is designed as a rich and big practical exercise in real conditions. We based it on a challenge, in order to offer the pupils the opportunity to design products or services (related to their specialization in school). The concept they’ll create must show innovation and meet the needs of a territory. In fact, the goal is to make them realize that a professional practice necessarily takes place in a certain territory. And that this territory’s characteristics and specificities impact the way they’ll be working. This project will lead the pupils to analyze their own territory but also European partners’ territories.After this first analysis, the pupils will be working in small groups : they’ll get creative in order to develop and put forward various project prototypes. They’ll be supported in this work by AGORA Guiers and ADRAL teams. Both are specialized in entrepreneurship, territorial economic development, new management methods and in local development. This part of the project will be an opportunity for the pupils to work in multinational groups. We want it to develop their ability to work in various cultural contexts.“Be young, be entrepreneur” is based on a complementary partnership that combines vocational and technological high schools, training institutes, local economic development associations, businesses and local authorities. Our goal is for this project to truly become a territorial experimentation. The communities will support the pupils throughout the project by providing them with their knowledge and expertise of their area. The pupils’ propositions that best meet the needs of the territory will then be selected and developed in real conditions.<< Implementation >>The project will be developed in three phases :Year 1 / The discovery of territoriesTargeted skills: communication, expression, analysis, synthesisThe learners will study the economic, social, cultural and environmental particularities of their territory and partners’ territories. We’ll organize some visits, meetings with local actors, and with people working jobs in relation to their courses, in order to feed their thinking and their analysis. We want them to both become aware that a professional practice is rooted in a particular territorial context, and compare regional situations with each other.They will have to show the results of this work, orally and on support. Those results will be a comparative synthesis.Year 2 / Product and service development, companiesTargeted skills: understanding the entrepreneurial process, learning new project management methodsThe students will be organized in groups. They’ll then create and put forward a product or service (related to their specialization in school) meeting the analysed needs of the territory they’re presenting their idea to. We want this phase to be creative, and to offer the pupils an opportunity to try out new management methods. This experimentation will be done during workshops animated by AGORA Guiers and ADRAL.An evaluation of the pre-projects of the classes will then be carried out by the local authorities partners. They will select the most relevant projects that will be developed afterwards.Year 3 / Development of the project in entrepreneurial mode, within an international challengeTargeted skills: entrepreneurial spirit, group work, autonomyBased on the three winning projects of the local authorities' jury, After the local authorities’ jury, the learners will work in groups to materialize the three winning projects in real conditions.Students will work together during mobilities but also during events such as summer camps or hackathons in order to develop even more the three winning concepts. The Etwinning platform will also be a support for joint work.Each group of learners will therefore benefit from visits to their own territory and partner territories during the mobilities of the project. Since each territory shows a strong touristic potential, a certain emphasis could be placed on this cultural and economic aspect of the visits.Meetings will be organized with local socio-economic actors, in order to embody the ""playground"" and study at the heart of the project. Artistic workshops will be organized. Strong both individual and collective experience that will allow students to take a surprising new look at the work field. The learners will participate in singing and musical expression workshops, in order to collectively create small sound creation pieces. Some other workshops will be focused on theater play : a different approach to tackle business issues.Other activities will be organized thanks to the networks of partners such as ALPHI, ADRAL and AGORA Guiers. They’ll tackle specific themes of entrepreneurship which will be defined according to the needs expressed during the first phase of the project. These interventions may take the form of conferences.<< Results >>Throughout the project, we want the impact on the students to be expressed in terms of know-how (skills) and know-how-to-be (attitudes) :- know-how : Learners must be able to take part in a collective project, in a multilingual context. In a more general point of view, the pupils will learn how to adapt to a certain complementarity of roles, when experiencing a “project way of working”. They won’t only have to mobilise capacities not only of observation, analysis, thinking, but also to show some creativity and inventiveness for developing new services or products. Finally, they will become familiar with new collaborative project management methods and their tools (such as GANTT diagram, CANVA models, pitching a project).- know-how-to-be: This project will lead students to grow more independent, to adapt to different cultural contexts, to be creative. The challenge will require rigor and the ability to seek out information to transform it into operational data. Overall, this is a way to open them to a more mature posture towards their future.Beyond the learners, the main beneficiary of this project, we want to meet the needs of other participants such as the institutional authorities, or ADRAL and AGORA Guiers teams : We wish to start a lasting sustainable involvement of the communities in territorial and innovative projects. “Be young, be entrepreneur” will be the opportunity to really listen to what a territory has to offer, and to adopt a newer approach towards potential undertakers. For instance, by creating a relationship between the institutions and vocational/technological high schools, the latter being the place of future professionals and opportunity training.Our goal is also to highlight the richness of rural areas for the young generation. Through the implementation of an “innovation prize” beyond the project, for instance, they could reward - and why not develop - projects designed by students or young entrepreneurs each year.Finally, we want to strengthen the role of “Tiers-Lieux” places as incubators of innovation and initiatives, and as real operators of local development."

S-PARCS: Envisioning and Testing New Models of Sustainable Energy Cooperation and Services in Industrial Parks S-PARCS presents a sound concept for reducing energy costs and energy consumption in industrial parks, while, at the same time, increasing renewable on-site energy production. The pre-assessment of the seven “Lighthouse Parks” from Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Austria, which participate in the study, has shown a high potential for joint energy actions, many of which are transferrable to the community of S-PARCS Followers in the UK, Sweden, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Portugal, Austria and Norway. 5 research organisations, 1 engineering company and 1 industrial association will make their knowledge on suitable technologies, novel business models and cooperative action among companies available to the parks to help them develop an “energy cooperation plan” and the necessary skills to achieve a long-lasting sustainability impact. At the end of the project, all Lighthouse parks will be equipped with a free ICT tool supporting the decision-making processes on joint investments, at least 1 full feasibility study for the most promising cooperative project, as well as a strategy for longer-term actions. 65 of the 278 located in the “Lighthouse Parks” are expected to benefit directly from reduced energy costs derived from energy efficiency measures, such as the use of waste heat, joint energy purchases and a wide range of viable small-scale renewable projects. Improvements in the parks in terms of energy efficiency are likely to be superior to 10%. The project’s impact, however, extends to the entire Follower Community, thanks to the identification of at least 20 viable cooperative energy solutions, which are to be widely disseminated. The identification of relevant financial, legal and organizational barriers to joint energy action in the parks – and ways of overcoming them - will make a valuable contribution to policy-making on regional, national and European level.

One of the most important challenges of the 21st century is to meet the world's demand for sustainably produced biomass for both food and the growing bio-products sector. Increased use of fresh water for agriculture and loss of farmland due to salinity are related concerns. Salicornia europaea (S. europaea) is grown commercially in the EU for its fresh tips, which are edible as salad (marsh samphire). It is a halophyte plant and can grow on saline lands without requiring freshwater for irrigation. When grown as a vegetable only the fresh tips are used while the woody part of the plant is considered a residue. Today, European farmers are using part of the fibrous residue for soil amendment and drying the fibers to produce herbal salt. However, the amount of residue to food product is large (approximately 80%) and the salt content of the residue is a problem when used for soil amendment, as it returns the salt to the soil. There is a great wish from Salicornia farmers to increase the value of this fraction in line with the principles of circular economy. The woody residue part of Salicornia has been investigated as a source of pharma- and nutraceutical products due to its high content of phytochemicals e.g. hydroxycinnamic acids (HCA). To help increase Salicornia farming there is a wish to valorize these residues via biochemicals and bioenergy production. The project will also examine the combination of aquaculture and Salicornia farming creating synergies such as formulation and test of phyto-chemicals rich functional fish feed and formulation and test of protein and lipids rich fish feed. The outcomes of this study will enable Salicornia farmers and aquaponics farms to utilize all fractions of the produced biomass and produce value added HCAs, functional fish feed, and bioenergy. This will create new circular industries with co-production of food, pharma, and bioenergy from this new sustainable type of crop with very little or no production of waste streams.