Download the ideas for mainstreaming here.

A Video Conference was held between the regions of the North West of England and Western Greece in November 2010 to discuss the UK’s Higher Level Skills Partnership (HLSP) good practice which is managed in the region by the North West Universities Association (NWUA).

Representatives of Patras Science Park and Patras University then visited the NWUA in December to speak with HLSP project managers in a number of sectors, including, Creative, Digital & ICT, Construction, Bio-medical, Energy & Environmental, to progress the exchange. Through a series of one to one discussions by the sector representatives, discussions of some of the initial barriers to implementation, exploring the regional infrastructure and funding options, and a visit to Manchester Metropolitan University, the Greek partners aim to implement a similar programme in their region.

Mini Europe was officially showcased as a good example of transnational working in November in the city of Liverpool to partners across the North West Region. The event was hosted by the North West Development Agency and the Committee of the Regions Open Days .

Bob Pels, Mini Europe’s General Manager, from the province of Flevoland, and Russell Yates, Regional Content Manager for the North West of England, from Tameside MBC, were interviewed on stage in front of a regional delegation of stakeholders by Councillor Flo Clucas, Liverpool City Council, on their experiences of transnational working and the practices covered by Mini Europe. The discussion highlighted some of the current exchanges that the North West is involved with, including: the Summer Entrepreneur programme and Summer Design Office, both from Sweden; the Tameside Business Family; the Cluster Development work that the North West is doing with Mini Europe partners in Hungary and Romania; the North West’s good practices in supporting female entrepreneuship; the North West Universities Association’s work with Greece on the North West’s Higher Level Skills Partnership programme; and how these programmes are being mainstreamed into regional and local policies and frameworks.

The event was carried out to showcase a number of projects currently taking place in the North West of England region – many of which concern support for Enterprise and Innovation and may be of interest to Mini Europe Stakeholders. The presentations from the event including ERDF projects in the region currently offering support for High Growth Businesses, Business Support programmes delivered by the region’s universities and Tourism projects, can be viewed here.

Apart from the good practice descrition, the catalogue also contains a judgement on the transferability of the practices.

The practices are now available here:  Mini Europe good practice catalogue update May 2011

The overall aim of this joint reserach initiatve is to promote better understanding of the key economic and social impacts generated by UK higher education institutions on their host regions and on other regions of the UK.

Click here for a list of current projects participating in the initiative.

Click here for a list of current academic research papers relating to the impact of HEIs on the regional economies in the UK.

Essential Innovation Manchester documents can be viewed here.

Why is innovation so important for Manchester?
The ability to generate new ideas and to turn those ideas into reality is a critical source of competitive advantage not just for businesses but also for cities. Economies advance by a process of trial and error. Those places that generate many trials of novel products, processes, business models and services are most likely to move ahead.

The Innovation Manchester BLOG is available online.

Innovation Manchester is a Manchester: Knowledge Capital project which accelerates the pace and spread of innovation in the Manchester City Region as a driver of economic growth.

Innovation Prospectus – Manchester City Region

The full Prospectus can be found here

Manchester is and always has been an innovative place, a place where people have new ideas which are taken up and in some cases, have changed the world. Manchester is the perfect place for ambition on the city region scale.

Vision of the Prospectus:

To transform Manchester into one of Europe’s leading cities for innovation by 2015.

Aim of the Prospectus:

To set out:
• a high-level view of the potential programme for transformative innovation;
• why we need more innovation across Manchester;
• what could be achieved if innovation can be accelerated and broadened across the city region;
• an outline and aspirational programme to accelerate innovation;
• how different players need to work together to deliver more innovation.

Our starting points are:

• the particular strengths and opportunities on which Manchester can build;
• the challenges and gaps which need to be addressed to realise the vision.

Our principles are:

• everyone can innovate – not just special people in special places;
• diversity drives innovation;
• ethical, radical values are part of how Manchester does innovation past and present;
• innovation is valuable not just for its own sake but for what it can deliver, economically and socially.

In reviewing the context for innovation across Manchester, the Manchester Business School analysis identified the following two Grand Challenges:

1. To expand the scale and accelerate the pace of innovation to enable Manchester to be on a level with other innovative cities.

2. To ensure the innovation agenda works to achieve broader economic and social goals across the city region.
The scale of these two challenges and the activities which could tackle them are so broad that no single institution or process can own them. Manchester knows that partnership working is a pre-requisite for success.

The full Prospectus can be found here

The model has been developed out of activity undertaken by the Sixth Framework Programme (CLUNET project). This involved the mapping of cluster policies in the 16 CLUNET regions and the identification of policies that support fast growing clusters, focusing on themes such as the internationalisation of cluster SMEs and incubation.

Cluster development is mainly concerned with encouraging networking & collaborations.  The effective exchange of information and the building of trust between individuals and organisations are crucial.

As the cluster grows there can be a demand for certain types of infrastructure:

- Premises where businesses can locate

- Incubators and science parks

- Facilities for use on a short term basis (Business Technology Centres)

- Pilot plants and demonstrators

Businesses using the infrastructure will need generic and specialised business support.
Businesses will benefit from collaborations with the other businesses using the infrastructure .

The practice consists on the contract by the enterprise of technological technical assistance for an amount of up to €6,000 in a matter that would imply the acquiring of new knowledge needed for the innovation of a product, process or service.
The technical assistance shall be given by an authorized service provider centre (these are those included recognized by the Spanish Government as an ‘Innovation and Technology Centre’, and that have applied to IMPIVA to become an authorised provider.

Leading Edge Technologies in the Debrecen University Region: Applications in Genomics, Nano- and Biotechnologies

Objectives of the practice

• launch translational R&D activities centering around the University of
• Debrecen
• transfer the knowledge generated at the University to the technology market
• create a framework for the transfer process, and to raise awareness in the
• citizens of the University
• ensure efficient protection for intellectual properties

Methodology

GENOMNANOTECH Regional Knowledge Centre (GND RKC) has been launched as a result of a competitive call for proposals published by the National Office for Research and Technology (NORT) in 2004. In this project sixteen companies carry out applied research together with researchers of the University of Debrecen, one of the most rapidly developing knowledge centers of the Eastern-Central-European region.

PROGRAM 1: New approaches for diagnosis and therapy of metabolic syndrome covering the highest morbidity diseases: from genomics to clinical applications

PROGRAM 2: Foundation of a competitive agro-biotechnology in the environs of the University of Debrecen: partnership from genomics to the product

PROGRAM 3: Industrial level development of drug candidates and functional foods and safety pharmacology services in a research unit at the University of Debrecen

PROGRAM 4: Biomedical measurement methods and nanotechnology

PROGRAM 5: Technology transfer, utilization of research results

Main results

Quantitative results:

• No. of new technologies: 110
• No. of new know how-s: 15
• No. of new IP-s: 38
• No. of new spin-off companies: 6
• No. of international publications: 459
• Dynamic development of industrial partners

(55 % annual average growth of net income per company)

Qualitative results:

• installing an innovation management system, including a project evaluation system at University of Debrecen
• setting up Knowledge and Technology Transfer Office of University of Debrecen, which became a significant player of the innovation system in Hungary
• enhancing R&D intensive investments to Region Észak-Alföld in cooperation with Innova
• Pharmapolis cluster comes into being
• Richter Gedeon Plc (Hungarian big-pharma company) set up its new biotechnology plant creating 110 new jobs in Debrecen

For more information:

http://gnd.unideb.hu/gnd/GRUKC.html