Chronicle of a success: Digital Innovation Hubs Annual Event 2018
First Day
Everything was ready in Warsaw for the run of the DIHs Annual Event 2018. Two months of intense work were about to crystalize in two days of amazing discussion about to begin.
It all started with a session presented by Agnieszka Gajewska, on how to widen towards Central and Eastern Europe to foster EU integration. The idea of this first block was to ensure that all companies could benefit from digital technologies, and no traditional industrial areas or regions are left behind in the digital transformation, special support is provided to regions, where DIHs still being underrepresented. Clusters, regional competence centres or technological parks as well as DIHs that did not participate in the programme can learn from concrete experience of training participants for their own benefit.
Agnieszka explained that up to 110 Billion each year could be produced of adopting such technologies. On particular speeches, it was particular interesting the views of Andrea Halmos, DG CONNECT, on the key role of DIHs to understand the needs of SMEs in their digital transformation process for going digital.
After her, the Bulgarian expert, Peter Statev, presented the DIH DIGITECH 4.0. This platform was created in 2017 by Bulgarian ICT Cluster, Centre of Excellence from Technical University Sofia and Move.bg to dynamize strategies on digitization in their national ecosystem.
The Institutional Dimension
After this panel, Member States’ representatives took over the stage together with the EU Commission to discuss the role of DIHs to bridge the digital divide. These representatives from all 28 Member States, set out the target to ensure the presence of DIHs in all regions by 2020, so that every business in Europe, whatever its sector of activity, wherever located and whatever its size, can take full advantage of digital innovations and competences. The panel also discussed these and similar questions, also in the context of the new Multi-Annual Financial Framework.
After the meeting, EU Commissioner, Mariya Gabriel, together with the Polish Minister of Technology, Jadwiga Emilewicz, visited the exhibition. During the visit they underlined how Digital Innovation Hubs are the concrete vehicle to enable EU SMEs and StartUps to fully benefit from the Digital Transformation process by profiting from New Tech and Digital Skills. Also, through Reskilling, Upskilling and networking. Putting forward the motto: Experiment, educate, engage & test before invest.
They stopped by our stand I4MS stands which displayed the achievements of SMEs in the initiative. Further, as organisers of the event, we discussed the importance of these sort of international event to leverage the public profile of all this initiatives, funding and institutional efforts.
They also commented the Polish potential in terms of SMEs & start-ups combined with the opportunities that DIHs offer would be one of the keys of success for the Digital Single Market Issues that are currently under negotiation as DEP, CEF Digital, P2B EUROHPC, Blockchain or Artificial Intelligence. Further, Commissioner Mariya Gabriel advocated for a digital continent for a common digital future thanks to collaboration between DIHs.
Disruptor Awards
After the visit, Mariya Gabriel and Minister Emilewicz revealed the winner of the I4MS Disruptors Awards. Nerves were cracking and one of the shortlisted, Nabladot representative, stated that he was trapped between wanting to win and hating the idea of improvising an speech. In the end, Clara García from the Spanish SME Compassis, had to improvise the speech after receiving the I4MS disruptor´s award from Commissioner Gabriel and Minister Emilewicz. The disruptive experiment consisted in improving the design of ships through cloud-based simulations & HPC. They received help from the EU project Fortissimo Pro and the DIH CESGA. Other shortlisted were George Pernoud and Elvez.
The rest of the day 400 attendees, 60 speakers and 50 institutional representatives enjoyed of a variety of activities. The exhibition area hosted 12 inspiring use cases and experiments by SMEs related to digital transformation and funded by EU initiatives. The exhibition also included a space for informing about the different open calls and public funding opportunities for the companies and of a corner pitch where other projects could showcase their experiences. Also, parallel to the exhibition, participants took part in matchmaking opportunities between DIHs and SMEs, between SMEs in different countries and between DIHs, but also with other regional stakeholders.
Second Day
The second day started with the panel on the role of EU initiatives in developing fully operational digital innovation hubs. In it, EU initiatives presented the challenges faced during their evolution in becoming DIHs as well as their current role in the network of DIHs. The DIHS explained the impact of taking part in these European initiatives had on their organisation. It is worth to highlight the contribution of Juan Francisco Blanes from Hub4Manuval, the DIH from Valencia, who explained how they did scale up their DIH.
After that, we counted with the expertise of Max Lemke, from DG Connect, who opened the second session about the role of DIHs as brokers in cross-border collaboration schemes. The session presented various mechanisms for DIHs, taking on the role of broker to match local SMEs with other DIHs in the community that have the complementary competence or with other SMEs or large companies to establish new EU value chains. In this regard, Hugo Thienpont from Accelerating Photonics innovation for SME’s (ACTPHAST 4.0), stated that more networking is needed to help the digitalization and that regions should do an extra effort to support SMEs.
In one of the latest sessions, Merete Nørby, International Chief Consultant of our partner MADE moderated a debate on success stories from supported SMEs. In it we also organized a very interactive session. Attendees used Sli.do to brainstorm on topics as the main challenge for SMEs to accomplish a digital transformation. All together we could reach to the conclusion that the biggest obstacle so far is the lack of guidance in how profound are the technological changes so SMEs cannot find updated information on these solutions/technologies to know where is best to invest.
In this session, firms explained how their participation in the projects has helped them to acquire and use new technologies & networking. Also, to improve their products so that end users can benefit from the cost-reduction and the speed of technological adoption.
Also, attendees learnt on new initiatives. Mayte Carracedo from FundingBox, presented I4MS initiative to the large public present on Thursday in the DIH2018. They learnt how to benefit from the advantages of our project through the future open calls. More info can be found here: i4ms.eu/opencalls
The presentation was also reinforced by the assistant of Kamila representing Invent Medical. She explained her experience accessing to funding from the H2020 SME Instrument. Also, our regional partner at I4MS, GAIN presented how they intend to connect I4MS solutions with local SMEs needs, using DIH as a facilitator.
Closing Remarks
But not everything was praising. Orsola De Marco spoke about the need to improve awareness to EU policy makers since up to her views, “few really know what kind of support start-ups and SMEs need”. She presented her work with ODIHQ in ODincubator and the Data Pitch.
In the end we enjoyed lot of enlightening presentations in the DIHs Annual Event 2018. Max Lemke, summed up in their closing remarks that the next challenge to be addressed is to develop new business models for the previously analysed cross-border collaboration. In their words, it was necessary to absorb all the innovative potential the EU SMEs are developing.
Jan Staniłko, Director of the Polish Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Technology, remarked the importance of initiatives like this conference to bring us together to share, network, discuss and to develop the ecosystem.
From our side, as closing remark for these two days of exhibition, and weeks of work, we would like to underline the vision of the European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, Mariya Gabriel, shared with us during the event: “Today, we are building Digital Innovations Hubs. Tomorrow, these DIHS will be the vehicles that will transport us to a future better and digital European continent.”
Written by Juan Antonio Pavón, Dissemination & Communication EU Projects at Mobile World Capital
