Open Innovation

Open Innovation Lombardia is an initiative designed to propose a new regional policy model to support innovation. It brings together stakeholders from the business and research sectors to incentivise and accelerate knowledge transfer processes and the development of innovations in products, processes, services, or organisational models, facilitating the creation of innovation ecosystems aligned with regional strategic priorities. The work plan is structured into three macro-phases:

1. Design of the Open Innovation environment and stakeholder engagement (November 2013 – February 2014).

2. Development of the methodology and IT platform, creation and qualification of a network of accredited intermediaries, and promotion of participation by companies and research centres (January 2014 – September 2014).

3. Launch and full implementation of the platform (October 2014 – June 2015).

As part of the Open Innovation initiative, the Lombardy Region launched a measure in early 2015 for MSMEs aimed at supporting access to Open Innovation platforms. The measure seeks to implement specific actions designed to create an environment conducive to the emergence of advanced innovation initiatives. This objective is pursued both through a series of interventions aimed at orienting the research system towards the application of results and through actions intended to make businesses more open to collaboration with research organisations and, more generally, with the network of innovation system operators. Also within the scope of the regional Open Innovation project, the second call for incentives was published on 29 April 2015, concerning the provision of grants to support the creation and development of communities within the regional open innovation platform that are consistent with the regional smart specialisation strategy.