The EU faces huge challenges in food security, sustainable agriculture, marine and maritime and inland water management. Blue Growth solutions can play an important role in meeting these challenges and unlock the potential of oceans and inland water for the benefit of European competitiveness. Blue Growth is identified as a key emerging industry to be supported via inter cluster collaboration as well as a key driver for the EU economy. NEPTUNE aims at developing new cross-sectoral and cross-border industrial value-chains, including notably SMEs, to foster the development of Blue Growth industries in Europe and beyond. This will be based on the construction or reconfiguration of value chains driven by the integration of new technologies and know-how between Water, Aerospace, ICT and Agriculture industries. NETPUNE addresses in particular three key aspects of Blue Growth that have a great potential to benefit from such collaboration and SME innovation support: (i) Water management in urban and rural environments; (ii) Fluvial and maritime transport and port logisitics; (iii) Environment and renewable marine energy. From a methodological perspective, NEPTUNE focuses on two main concepts: the innovative Open Space Platform that refers to the collaborative space and innovation animation techniques via a project emergence methodology that helps SMEs and other stakeholders to identify market trends and opportunities and support the incubation of Blue Growth projects and innovation ideas. NEPTUNE expects to support at least 100 SMEs for the development of 40 new innovative solutions. NEPTUNE brings together 10 of Europe’s leading clusters from 7 countries and 2 additional innovation, creativity and inter-cluster expert organisations to implement this ambitious project.

The project wants to identify and design new programmes aimed at supporting the adoption of Open Innovation practices by SMEs, strengthening the collaboration between SMEs and innovative start-ups. In particular, the project will try to understand if and how Open Innovation (OI) tools used with increasing frequency and effectiveness by large companies to get closer to the start-ups world (e.g. collaborations with incubators and accelerators, running of call for ideas, B2B meetings) could be usefully implemented also by SMEs, or if other kinds of initiatives, still to be designed, could be more appropriate for these businesses. The project team will try to identify which role European innovation agencies could play in facilitating the adoption of OI practices by smaller companies. Project partners will be involved in peer-learning activities, using the Twinning+ methodology. Through joint workshops and desk researches, existing programmes consistent with the project challenge will be peer-reviewed. On the basis of good practices and strength points derived from this analysis, project partners will try to identify improvements and new tools, testing their own hypotheses with pilot initiatives whenever possible. The result of the group activities will be a Design Option Paper, a document containing recommendations about the most suitable actions to be implemented by innovation agencies for designing effective SME innovation support programmes. In accordance with the Work Programme, the project aims at strengthening the innovation support capacity of European innovation agencies. Peer-learning activities will help not only the agencies directly involved in Twinning+ in reviewing their service offerings, but also all the subjects interested in promoting the use of OI tools by SMEs. In fact, the DPO will be a useful public guide containing practical suggestions for delivering effective initiatives in this field, addressing all the elements of the Service Delivery System

DOORS will bring the four pillars of the SRIA into reality, turning the challenges into opportunities for a highly valued Black Sea. It will harmonise research and provide the infrastructure to better understand the Black Sea, particular ecosystem characteristics, develop the framework to support Blue Growth and early development of start-ups, and provide evidence to inform policy and behavioural change. To reach its ambitious objectives, the project team will work closely with stakeholders from the start to develop an open research system and establish a framework to support continuous stakeholder dialogue. DOORS will implement three Work Programmes: a System of Systems to harmonise approaches and provide an accessible data repository, a Blue Growth Accelerator to support enterprise, and Knowledge Transfer and Training to share best practice and build capacity. These will: • Engage stakeholders through communication, dissemination and training activities to raise awareness, build capacity and foster a stronger Black Sea identity • Harmonise data collation, analysis and access to optimise data use in decision and policy making • Strengthen the Black Sea scientific network through new collaborations, and bridge the gap between science and policy • Provide a range of products to support Black Sea innovation and enterprise DOORS will have long-lasting impact by giving stakeholders in the region the skillsets and understanding to: • Implement key policies and legislation • Improve environmental quality and reduce pollution risk • Design measures to mitigate pollution and remediate historically contaminated areas • Become resilient communities • Realise and sustainably develop potential economic growth for future well-being • Build capacity in existing industries, develop new start-ups and become actively involved in delivering Blue Growth • Create ocean informed citizens to better understand Black Sea’s potential