Innovation clusters play an important role in the European innovation system as facilitators. Not only do they secure a strong connection between industry, SMEs and academia, but they also help and support the stakeholders towards funding – national as well as European.

Smart Innovation Norway is one of the strongest clusters in Scandinavia and beside from the role as facilitator it also does research itself within smart technologies and offering lab and test facilities. One of my good old contacts from PNO, Elena Calzado Roldán, now works for Smart Innovation Norway as Innovation Management Expert. She supports the organisation and its members in attracting EU funding.

I managed to get her into the virtual podcast studio for at talk about the role of the cluster, how they are working with the EU funding and finally also for Elena to share an EU funding assessment tool that she developed to make it easier for stakeholders to approach the funding.

This episode offers insights on how clusters can help you towards funding – great content!

Time codes:

00:01:55 Introduction

00:09:16 Fly in on Smart Innovation Norway

00:16:09 How Smart Innovation Norway works as a cluster

00:30:31 How Smart Innovation Norway works with EU R&D funding

01:01:04 EU Readiness Assessment Tool

01:30:52 The toughest challenge