Regional Innovation Pole of the Region of Western Greece

Greece,
Region of Western Greece,
Patras

The Regional Innovation Pole of Western Greece is a union of public and private sector key players in the Region of Western Greece, aiming at the development, promotion, and exploitation of innovation in the region.

Intelesens Limited

Northern Ireland,
Belfast

Intelesens is an internationally recognized, leading innovator in targeted non-invasive vital signs monitoring. The company was incorporated in August 2000 (with Enterprise Equity leading an investment of £1.7m into the company in May 2005) by 3 of the province's leading scientists as a University of Ulster spin-out company.

Basilicate Innovazione

Italy,
Basilicate Region,
Potenza

Basilicate Innovazione has been developed thanks to an accord between the regional government and AREA Science Park, the science and technology park of Trieste, signed in June 2009. This accord allowed to transfer into Basilicate Region a model successfully tried by AREA, with the aim of providing the regional territory with a permanent body useful to give services and instruments to sustain the enterprises competitiveness and to valorize the research.

Cardio & Brain Signal - Signal conditioning system for physiological signals

Slovenia

The project was developed by joint effort of several research institutions under the 6^th framework project BRACCIA. The main goal was to design and develop a new system for data acquisition, where the main stress would be on signal conditioning and high quality AD conversion.

Competence Brokering linking SME needs to research opportunities.

Norway

Reasearch-based brokering is a sub-programme of the programme Mobilisation for R&D-related innovation (MOBI) organized by the Research Council of Norway. Research-based brokering has two equal goals: to promote great focus on R&D activity and to strengthen the role of the research institutes as partners in collaboration with industry.

Corallia Clusters Initiative

Greece,
Region of Attica

Corallia Clusters Initiative is an initiative that aims at the development of innovation clusters in high technology sectors that represent high potential to increase their competitiveness, impove their position in the global market and adopt a model for the provision of high added value services.

Energy Harvesting for Mobile Eco-Efficient Wireless Sensor Netowrks

 Austria,
Upper Austria,
Steyr

The ECO-SENSOR project enables the reliable integration of dense wireless sensor networks for optima condition monitoring and process control, accelerates engineering and integration times, increases operational machining safety, dramatically reduces machine bread-downs and maintenance costs, and enables the access of not reachable areas. The resulting prototype was able to supply the WTU and the sensor during working conditions.

EuroGPS SafeDrive

Bulgaria,
Sofia

EuroGPS SafeDrive is a GPS-based vehicle speed monitoring and alerting system with a state-of-the-art centralized POI management, and automatic Web-based POI database distribution and update into the plug-and-play GPS device.

Frozen Food Temperature Monitoring during Transportation and Storage

Austria,
Lower Austria,
Wiener Neustadt

The main points of this project was to develop a concept and a functional model for: retrieving temperature readings from temperature sensors in refrigerating plants, analysing the recordings for eventual abnormalities to generate an alarm, and archiving the recordings in a database for a continuous report. An additional requirement was to ensure that the communication to the sensors happens over a wireless bond.

Inland AIS System Implementation

Croatia,
Danube and Drava rivers basin,
Osijek and Vukovar

The main objectives were the improvement of cross-border mobility and accessibility in the border region on the Danube and Drava waterways and the development of accessible ICT technology that will have a future use in social and economical life of the defined area.

Syrinix

UK,
Norwich,
Hethel

Syrinix is a spin-out company from the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Following almost ten years of research and consultancy in the field of water leak detection and location, Syrinix Limited was created to exploit this experise. The detection facilitates the prevention of larger leaks and allows the water companies to intervene successfully to prevent the catastrophic failure of pipes.

TECHNO SEED - A concrete way to promote entrepreneurial initiatives in ICT field

Italy,
Friuli Venezia Giulia,,
Udine

Techno Seed is an initiative with the aim of collecting a set of good and innovative ideas in ICT field and make them concrete innovations through the creation of new enterprises thanks to a formation, consulting, incubation path. Techno Seed is situated in the Science & Technology Park of Udine and has been funded by the Ministry of Economic Development.

Technopol Program

Austria,
Lower Austria,
Wiener Neustadt - Tulin - Krems

In order to bridge the gap between the areas of academic education, industry and R&D the so called Technopol-Program" of Lower Austria was founded in 2004. To enable a coordinated technology oriented regional development for each of the three Technopol locations of lower Austria, a local expert was hired to overtake the duty as regional Technopol manager..

KIBERsik - Electricity Peak Shedding System for energy efficiency in industry

Slovenia

KIBERsik is part of the KIBERnet family designed to meet demanding challenges of the future SmartGrid technologies. The system KIBERsik will be built and demonstrated at four industrial consumer sites. It will enable lower energy bills and efficient use of energy. KIBERsik was developed by research teams of INEA, Jozef Stefan Institut and Faculty for Electrical Engineering in Ljubljana. The project is co financed by the European structural funds and Slovenian Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology.

Virtual Manufacturing Support for Enterprises in Serbia

Serbia,
Sumadija,
Kragujevac

Virtual Manufacturing Support for Enterprises in Serbia was implemented within EDEP programme “Support to Enterprise Development and Entrepreneurship Programme” with realization period from December 2006 to September 2007. The overal project objectives were on the one hand to contribute to Serbian enterprises effiency, quality, technology potential and overall competitiveness, both national and internatinal, and on the other hand to succeed in reducing time and costs in the development of new or the improvement of existing products..

Vlatacom Document Reader - Handheld

Serbia,
Belgrade

After the market demand for handheld document readers has been recognized and analyzed, the VDR-Handheld project has been started and run with Vlatacom's own resources and finances with objective to keep a competitive edge and stay ahead of competition, as a recognized designer and manufacturer of machine-readable travel document (MRTD) readers..

TrackGPS Business

Romania,
Cluj,
Cluj-Napoca

Following the experience with international prestigious companies, AROBS started developing a series of software solutions for the local market: sales force automation (SFA) on PALM and PDA’s (Optimall by Arobs), GPS/GPRS (TrackGPS) fleet tracking / monitoring systems and tourism applications (ATOS/ABOS). TrackGPS Business, the fleet tracking / monitoring system, has been the most successful one – because of the growing necessity to make the fleet activities more efficient. TrackGPS Business, the vehicle tracking system, is helping thousands of fleet owners to drive down operating costs and increase earnings. It offers live vehicle tracking, fleet maintenance and risk management information to fleet operators of all sizes.

Finland’s Strategic Centres for Science, Technology and Innovation Example: TIVIT - Producing Innovations for the ICT Industry

Finland

In Finland, to foster research and innovation, and collaboration, multidisciplinary Strategic Centres for Science Technology and Innovation are established and involve different sectors of industry and society. Basically, they are organised as non-profit organisation, owned by industrial and academic partners, and a virtual research organisation. In their research programmes, it is possible to generate sufficient critical mass and combine versatile competences for achieving world-class expertise and global breakthroughs. Together with shareholders investments, centres are funded by public organisations with annual investments of some €40-60 million.

Rehabilitation of a Network of Water Wells for Capturing Raw Water – Automation System for Monitoring

Romania,
North-West,
Satu Mare

This best practice describes a successful implementation of a project resulted from the collaboration between local authorities and governmental authorities, the funding of the project being supported by EU grants and co-financed by the local authorities from Satu Mare. The objective was to extend the infrastructure regarding the drinking water, due to the population growth that was not anticipated when the existing infrastructure was first developed. The approach was to rehabilitate the water wells network for water collecting and to create a system for the monitoring and control of the whole process, with the purpose of increasing the capacity of delivering the raw water to the Station for the Treatment of Drinking Water, which delivers drinking water to the city and to the surrounding smaller towns..

Foundation of Spin-Off Company from Research Group at University

Austria,
Vienna

This best practice describes a successful foundation of a spin-off company from a university based research group including the transformation of research results into products. Key success factors of this good practice are the way how the relationship between the company and the university has been preserved to jointly pursue the research and product lines, the stable financing with own capital and the mutual benefits for both parties. For the continuous success als the broadening of this initial relationship to other academia was important to cover different research needs.

Sirma Young Spirit (SYS) - Early Stage Financing

Bulgaria,
Sofia

Sirma Young Spirit (SYS) program is designed to help young entrepreneurs in the field of Information Technologies (IT) and providing them with seed investments, which are the earliest stage in the chain of venture funding. The SYS program is key part of Sirma's strategy to look for new business ideas and to seek, promote and develop innovations..

PFAU-Programme for the financial support of startups from Universities in North Rhine-Westfalia (NRW)

Germany,
Westphalia,
North Rhine

The main promotion goal is to develop innovative products, processes and service ideas into a marketable product or service by using existing state-of-the-art facilities at the universities and R&D centres (laboratories, equipment, ICT infrastructure). The programme targets graduates from universities and researchers whose last university degree (diploma or PhD) was completed at the latest three years prior to application. The programme offers a financial stimulus on a monthly base in order to support graduates in the option of "Starting your own business". The maximum duration of the funding is two years. Additionally, the start-ups are given a kind of "pocket money" to upgrade their business skills and make their first investments in equipment. The programme was developed and is financed by the Ministry of Innovation,,

NORDITE programme

Sweden,
Norway,
Finland

NORDITE programme for funding of research in the area of embedded systems is being issued on behalf of VINNOVA Sweden, the Research Council of Norway and Tekes, Finland. The programme i designed to promote increased co-operative research in the fields of technology development for shortwave radio, wireless sensors, short range wireless networks and RFID or MEMS utilizing RF technology and to assist Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish research institutes and companies to further develop and demonstrate their technical expertise in that area. It had been realised in a form of two calls for projects funded by national funds in the sum of app. 15 million EURO.

Mobile Asset Management Platform

Austria,
Lower Austria,
Wiener Neustadt

The idea of this project is to provide field force agents with a part of this information out of the GIS to alleviate their work and shorten their overall lead time. For the benefit of the field agents and the customers and therefore for the whole company. This information will be provided in form of a web application in well-defined information layers and intuitive user controls. The web application grants access with common smart phones, which are already used by most companies in the field..

MikroElektronika

Serbia,
Belgrade - Lajkovac

Founded in 2001, MikroElektronika  produces now a wide range of development tools, compilers and books for PIC, dsPIC, AVR, 8051, ARM and PSoC microcontroller families. The company headquarter is located in Belgrade and production facilities in Lajkovac, Serbia. The production facilities of MikroElektronika are equipped with true hole and SMD (surface mounting device) assembly technology. These two production lines enable the company to manufacture first class products with complete hardware and software solutions..

UltraSOC

UK,
Cambridge

UltraSoc Technologies (UST) was founded in 2006 as a spin-out from the University of Kent and became a joint spin-out with the University of Essex to exploit the research carried out by Professor Klaus McDonald-Maier with Dr Andrew Hopkins and their team. The company aims to develop and market UltraDebug™, a highly flexible, multi-processor, System-on-Chip (SOC) debug support platform. UltraDebug™ will provide superior, application-level, debugging facilities, enabling the embedded systems industry to create more advanced and reliable products in markets such as automotive and consumer devices..

Vacuum pressure control at the plasma annealing and cleaning machine

Austria,
Lebring

One of the case studies for validating the 66^th EU FW project Connect was the control system for plasma machine, which was developed by the Jozef Stefan Institute and the Department of Systems and Control for the company PlasmaIt, which produced the machines. Both partners were members of the project consortium, the first one as an RTD provider and the second one as an end user. The research and laboratory prototype development of the vacuum pressure control system was performed and funded within the project Connect, while the final implementation was funded by PlasmaIt directly.

LETI

Russia,
St. Petersburg

Technology Park of St. Petersburg State Electrotechnical University 'LETI' (TPEU), was created in 1991. The purpose of TPEU is to create conditions favorable first of all for the organization, development and activity of small innovation structures (small firms), secondly for the accelerated industrial development of scientific research and design works, inventions and discoveries, and at last for creation of competitive technologies, products and services and bringing them to consumers on a commercial basis.

IMS-BAS embedded systems

Bulgaria,
Sofia

IMS-BAS offers integrated technological solutions to create high-quality castings of nonferrous alloys using the gas pressure casting method (CPCM). The implementation of management processes is based on microcontrollers. The project is a result of the collaboration between Foundry Institute (Aachen, Germany), and MAGMA Gmbh and Foundry Institute (Krakow, Poland). The  project , entitled as "Use of numerical simulation to obtain high quality castings from casting a gaseous pressure",  is financed under the program "Copernicus". The main advantages of following this approach are: higher product quality and productivity, less energy and metal consumption, and compliance with modern environmental standards.

SLALEN

Ukraine,
Dnipropetrovs'k

Innovative center SLALEN - is a public non-profit organization specializing in innovation management and technology transfer, IPR protection, evaluation and promotion of innovations, established in 2006 with the support of Co. Ltd Domstroy, Dnipropetrovs'k. The main aim of SLALEN is to attract funding for innovative ideas, engineering and to take them to internal and external market. IC SLALEN uses in their work approach, based on supporting the chain "theorist-researcher-practitioner-researcher/engineer-technologist/prodution worker-marketing-seller" and at the same time luring in this process administration, press, bank and auxiliary manufacture.

Flap Type Wavemaker

Bulgaria,
Varna

The "Flap type wavemaker" project was implemented in partnership with the Bulgarian Ship Hydrodynamic Centre (BSHC). The funding was provided by the Centre in the form of assigned scientific and development task to AMK Ltd. The specificity of the assignment needed innovative approach, in order to achieve the expected result and engineering effect. The involved specialists from AMK Ltd. worked in close cooperation with their colleagues from the Institute and together came to certain conclusions, which later on, laid the foundation of the innovation.

Automated System for Footwear Production

Italy,
Vigevano

This Best Practice describes how a whole industrial sector (footwear sector) can be totally re-designed and improved with the support of technology and innovative ideas that redefine both productive processes and products. Moreover, it shows that these initiatives are realizable if a strong cooperation between research, public investments and entrepreneurial initiative is achieved. Finally, this BP includes the creation of a pilot plant where new innovative and high technological equipment, tools, systems and processes, have been tested with the aim of raising the innovation level of the whole footwear sector..