OPEN INNOVATION DRIVEN ECONOMY

DRIVEN promotes a cross-border innovation ecosystem, challenge-oriented and managed in a distributed way, to align R&D&I resources and capabilities with the needs of the business fabric, especially industrial SMEs.

Its goal: to foster industrial transformation and technological entrepreneurship in line with the smart specialisation strategy of EUROACE. Framed within Priority 2 of the POCTEP and Specific Objective 1.4, it enhances endogenous resources, industrial transition, and entrepreneurship.

Despite significant investment efforts in R&D&I over the past decade — supported by ERDF and Next Generation EU — gaps persist compared to national and European averages in R&D expenditure as a share of GDP and in business innovation.

Building on RIS3 and Horizon Europe, DRIVEN establishes a distributed network of specialised entities that will provide advanced services to SMEs, combining open innovation and science-based technological entrepreneurship.

These SMEs will be trained to define strategic challenges linked to the scientific and technological offer through a shared platform, from which projects will emerge to be incubated and accelerated within the network of spaces managed by the partners.

Funding body:
INTERREG POCTEP

Project manager:
Ángel Huertas