The digital transformation of EU business and society presents enormous growth potential for Europe. It is estimated that digital technologies, such as Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence or the Internet of Things, have the potential to add 1.5 million jobs to the EU’s digital economy, and that SMEs can grow two to three times faster when they integrate digital technologies into their business models. Nevertheless, on the one hand, SMEs are not currently taking full advantage of these advanced technologies because they usually lack orientation, know-how and hands-on solutions in line with their current business, and on the other hand, digitalisation services in too many occasions do not take into account the rapid changing innovation ecosystem and the emerging of new technologies. The objective of DigiJourney is to enable the participating innovation agencies to exchange knowledge, know-how, and good practices on advanced methodologies and tools for digitalisation assessment to SMEs and customised support services. In particular, based on the Twinning+ methodology, the project aims to cover peer learning activities for three digitalisation approaches and the design of a digitalisation journey for SMEs, which will facilitate all innovation agencies to improve their digitalisation support services adapted to their specific national/regional contexts, and will allow SMEs to get the right digital tools to gain competitiveness. This peer-learning and peer-review scheme has been developed based on each partner's identified competences in advanced digitalisation services for SMEs. DigiJourney will therefore contribute to the specific challenge of increasing SMEs support programmes and the satisfaction of them with the support provided, through a joint learning effort of the three participating partners and the elaboration of a suitable Design Options Paper that will be shared with other EU innovation agencies and networks, and with national and EU policy-makers.

The objective of this project is to provide innovation support services in 2015 and 2016 to SMEs in the regions covered by the consortium members. These innovation support services will be differentiated for two groups of SMEs: a) SMEs that have been selected as beneficiaries of the SME instrument, phase 1 or phase 2. For these companies, the consortium members will offer Key Account Management (KAM) services, which are accompanying services for the SMEs to identify weaknesses in their innovation capacities and suitable external coaches throughout their participation in the SME instrument. b) SMEs that have high potential for growth and internationalisation but that need to improve their innovation management capacities. These companies will receive direct assessment services from the consortium members in order to detect barriers and develop and implement an action plan in order to enhance such capacities and overcome the detected barriers.

Population ageing is a long-term trend that is dramatically changing the European society. Eurostat shows that people over 65 years will reach 28.7% of the European population by 2020. Areas such as health, employment and social security are re-defining currently in line with demographic change, emerging strongly the notion of Silver Economy. This demographic situation is also having a considerable impact on the increase of the tourism demand, on the other hand the kind of activities demanded by Silver consumers are different from the activities demanded in the past so the tourism sector must face a redefinition of its products, services and activities to engage seniors out of their homes. For that reason, Silver Tourism will define a specific professional profile aimed to create and develop touristic products adapted to real needs of seniors. This profile will take into account a wide range of activities such us organized trips, local information, leisure activities, travel agencies, transportation, cultural heritage, … and, of course, health and welfare, are activities that benefit an integrated approach to senior tourists.This project is targeting mainly to Tourism VET Schools and higher education institutions, Tourism SMEs, Consultancy companies offering services to Tourism Sector, Entrepreneurs related to Tourism Sector, Intermediate agents in charge of touristic promotion services (at local, regional, national or European level) and Tourism cluster or associations. Project activities will involve direct and indirect audience from the very beginning through different events.The project will follow a methodology used in Service Design (SD) processes. SD is a process where the user is situated in the centre of the service, and the user experience is analyse as a whole. With this methodology, the intangibles assets play an important role in the interaction users-provider. A complete training system (materials, activities, contents, etc.) adapted to final users real needs will be developed and available through a learning methodology based on Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).To ensure that all the activities are carried out in a coordinated way, a management, coordination and assessment system, which guarantees the correct working of the project and the fulfilment of the established objectives, making the most of the new technologies to enhance the management quality and efficiency.On the other hand in order to reach target audience, disseminate and capitalise the project results a dissemination and an exploitation plan will be developed.The project will be lead by CCSIBa (Cámara de Comercio e Industria de Badajoz) from Spain and counts with all necessary actors needed to develop the project efficiently and to implement its results successfully, giving special importance to the knowledge related to Tourism Sector and Silver Economy, in order to include real market needs of this sector in the training system for Silver Tourism profile.The consortium integrates FUNDECYT PCTEX, from Spain counting with large experience promoting European projects aimed to improve competitiveness of regional SMEs through innovative training and with an important expertise related to Tourism Sector and specially to Silver Economy.Also Hungary is represented in the consortium with Trusted Business partners, representing the European Certification and Qualification Association in Hungary and provides high quality consulting and training services for process improvement and capability determination of organizational governance in partnership with the Budapest Business School, the biggest and most reputed business college in Hungary.The participation from EUROMONTANA (France) is a key asset related to project dissemination due to their network role. Euromontana represents around 75 organisations in 20 European countries. Tourism, agriculture, innovation, rural and regional development, ICT are among its main priorities.ADR Romania counts with a wide experience working in European projects, nowadays is involved in project related to Tourism and plays an important role in the region in reference to training and education.And finally the consortium is completed with The New Tourism Institute from Slovenia representing also both topics, tourism sector and training, it runs and coordinates a national project Bank of Tourism Potentials in Slovenia. The multi-award winning project (UNWTO, EC, OECD) aims at acceleration of tourism development in Slovenia and promotes innovation as one of key competitive advantages.

RESIST will strengthen the resilience and accelerate the transformation and increase adaptive capacity of 12 climate-vulnerable EU regions, implementing 4 large-scale demonstrators of resilient innovations for Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) with quintuple-helix partnerships (including 1 in a less developed region) and promote transfer of know-how and innovative solutions to 8 twin regions (of which 4 less developed regions) through both physical mutual-learning activities and innovative immersive digital twins. The consortium will engage EU associations, CCA research groups, scientific experts, social engagement and communication institutions, innovation agencies and 1 Venture Capital Fund to co-create and validate innovative solutions, raise awareness, leverage citizens participation and promote sustainable exploitation of results towards the markets. RESIST will contribute to the EU agenda on CCA, through intervention in 3 main areas: Promote and demonstrate an innovative, more participative approach to resilience and CC adaptation in 4 demonstrator and 8 twinning regions (including 5 less developed regions in total) demonstrating >12 new solution lines, accelerating regional resilience and helping reach the adaptation-mission objectives of ‘building resilience and upscaling solutions through 100 demonstrators and accelerating the transition in 200 pilot regions and communities by 2030’ reaching already 4% and 6% of these aims by 2027, with 4 demonstrators and involvement of 12 regions Co-design and contribute to the development of new regional measures, policy instruments and social and technological solutions in 12 regions involving 22m citizens, increasing awareness/resilience by 10% and levels of green investments by 20%, reducing economic losses due to natural hazards such as floods by 14% and climate protection gap by 50%; Reduce time-to-market/risk for >100 new CCA Solutions from providers across Europe, offering them scale-up for their products.

Up2Circ will demonstrate a replicable pathway to motivate and effectively support SMEs to innovate and transform towards sustainable growth and adresses the need of EU innovation support ecosystems to better join forces and make best use of synergies in order to enable a quick and comprehensive transition of Europe's SMEs towards a circular economy on a large scale. With the Up2Circ-Accelerator the project accompanies SMEs from exploration of opportunities to concrete implementation projects concerning the uptake of circular business model, product and process innovation, focussing on achievable innovation measures with clear mid-term benefits for the SMEs. Up2Circ is dismantling barriers with a customized, client-centric advisory approach and gives access to specific expertise and skills that SMEs need to develop a concrete action plan on how to transition. Learning modules of Up2Circ-Academy will connect sustainable innovation, the uptake of advanced technologies and social innovation aspects under the holistic concept of a circular economy and will be compiled based on existing results and in close cooperation with EU networks and initiatives such as ATI, EDIH, ECCP, EIT and OITB. Up2Circ methodology and materials will be made available to SME innovation advisors and trainings will be offered targeting e.g. EEN sustainability advisors to upscale project results. Further, to increase efficiency of EU innovation support ecosystems, four leveraging effects will be demonstrated and exploited: Make use of existing results, reach out more efficiently to SMEs, make use of complementary strengths, establish closer connections.