March 18th. “Europe 2020”. ForTransRIS Final Seminar held in Brussels.

Casa Liguria was the venue of the ForTransRIS Final Seminar where more than 50 attendants coming from the European Commission, research centers and the Brussels offices of many EU regions participated.

Amongst them representatives from the following regions and institutions: Navarra, Balears, Junta de Andalucia, Asturias (Spain), Piemonte, Marche, Liguria (Italy), Auvergne, Centre, Limousin, Bretagne, Midi-Pyrennes, Rhones-Alpes (France), North West England (United Kingdom), Bavaria and Baden-Wurtemberg (Germany), the House of Slovak Regions, Tallin EU Office (Stonia), Eszak-Alfold (Hungary)…

The Seminar was opened by Ms. Simona Costa, Deputy Head of Office of Casa Liguria, and Mr. Peter Guntner, Scientific Officer of the project, at DG Research, welcoming participants to the Seminar.

Mr. Rafael Muguerza, Director of the Innovation Service of Navarra Government, Spain, and Project Co-ordinator, presented the ForTransRIS project strategy, outcomes and Policy Recommendations, which were listened by representatives from DG Regio and DG Research, taking part on the Seminar.

Ms. Luisa Sanches from Unit 2, Directorate D of DG Regio concluded the introduction to the seminar, providing an overview on the priority of Research and Innovation policies on the Cohesion Policy on the current programming period, and the eventual discussions already delving on the next generation of Innovation Policies.

Methodology Guidelines resulting from ForTransRIS were presented by Ms. Ana Morato from the Observatory for Industrial Technology Foresight. Main Lessons Learnt from the experimental implementation of transregional methodology foresight were explained, providing a valuable input for EU regions intending to accomplish such exercises.

The practical pilot case implemented on ForTransRIS on the use of transregional foresight focused on the Transregional Technology and Knowledge Transfer by 2018 among partner regions. Results from the pilot case were presented by Mr. Claudio Roveda, from Fondazione Rosselli and Mr. Johan Skogh, from inno Group. The resulting Transregional Road Map on this topic was shared by the former.

The Stakeholders Tribune gave voice to regional Stakeholders involved in the ForTransRIS Pilot Case, as for instance Ms. Françoise Restif from Bretagne innovation, who highlighted the impact of the project on the design of Bretagne’s first Regional Innovation Strategies. Mr. Juan Ramón de la Torre from AIN, representative of Navarra Technology Centers Network and Mr. Julio Maset from pharma company Cinfa, based in Navarra, stressed out the potential that the ForTransRIS Road Maps might have in the development of collaborative proposals on transectoral and non competitive new sectors among Stakeholders from partner regions.

Dr. Gunter Clar presented the usefulness of policy intelligence tools, such as foresight on the opening up of the regional innovation systems of Europe. Success stories on this field were shared by representatives from 3 thriving EU regions such as Catalunya (Mr. Jesús Sanz from Acc1ó-CIDEM), Eindhoven (Mr. Ton van Lier from Brainport Foundation) and Wallonia (Mr. Michael van Cutsem from Destree Institute).

The Final seminar was the perfect venue for starting the dissemination activities of the project and for the presentation of the upcoming ForTransRIS Network, that will focus on the further opening up of regions in Europe in the Research, Technology Development and Innovation field.

All presentations made by Seminar Speakers are available at this link (link al apart ado Nuevo en Final Seminar).