Fomento de San Sebastián, the city’s innovation agency, is a member of European consortium I-CSI EU (Intensifying Cross-Sectoral Innovation within the European Union), which sets out to refocus local/regional innovation policies to boost cross-sectoral collaboration and come up with a comprehensive response to the social and economic challenges faced by participating regions.
Fomento de San Sebastián will be working on this project with a specific emphasis on SEIC businesses (companies providing knowledge-intensive services), thanks to the key role it has played in transformation of the city’s economic model and strategy. The latest Orkestra report for Fomento de San Sebastián shows that SEIC businesses account for 3% of all jobs in the city, compared to 0.7% in Vitoria and 0.3% in Bilbao, making the city the leading provincial capital of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country in terms of R+D jobs at technology companies.
The project will be carried through over 4 years, featuring 8 innovation-intensive European regions and a consultant partner, and will co-design solutions for these challenges from the perspective of cross-sectoral innovation, overcoming work silos in innovation ecosystems. It will entail the exchange of good practices in this area, and also research into existing innovative solutions and the creation of new methodologies which may be passed around by partners to be applied subsequently. During the project, members of the consortium will be taking part in fact-finding missions, visiting interregional workshops, and holding prospection/strategic analysis sessions.
Fomento de San Sebastián’s participation in the I-CSI EU project elaborates on its focus on the implementation of new innovative solutions to drive the city’s ecosystem, by identifying opportunities, resources and innovative solutions with an integrational cross-sectoral collaborative approach.
Concentrating on SEIC sectors (Strategic Innovation/Knowledge Sectors), Fomento de San Sebastián aims to consolidate this segment as a priority area for development, bolstering the positioning of San Sebastián as a City of Science and Innovation.
This project is being carried out by way of a follow-up to another three initiatives (Skale 2CT, EnAibler and NOTRE) where the organisation is currently involved in the Interreg Europe programme, which sets out to share innovative sustainable strategies to address the challenges facing regional and local development.
Participation in EU projects bolsters Fomento de San Sebastián’s task of creating an innovation ecosystem through collaboration and strategic connections, and also ramps up the city’s worldwide positioning alongside some major ultra-innovative bodies.
The project consortium is composed of the following organisations:
- Province of West-Flanders (Belgium) - Coordinator
- Ecoplus. The Business Agency of Lower Austria (Austria)
- The Baltic Institute of Finland (Finland)
- TUA West (Belgium) – Consultant partner
- Fomento de San Sebastián (Spain)
- Warmia and Mazury Regional Development Agency (Poland)
- Emilia-Romagna Region (Italy)
- City of Bremen (Germany)
- Novi Sad. Provincial Secretariat for Regional Development (Serbia)
Further information: [Fomento San Sebastián website].
This project is co-financed through the Interreg Europe programme.