Open Innovation: Being open to the knowledge and ideas of others, creating knowledge together and sharing knowledge with others - these are the central principles of Open Innovation. The large companies have recognized and are successfully implementing this approach for several years. However, there are still many companies that fail to recognize the potential of open innovation. Especially small and medium-sized companies are sceptical about the concept, although Open Innovation offers a lot of potential, in particular for SMEs.

In the DA-SPACE laboratories we bring together SMEs with young talents to create innovation together. The training we offer increases the entrepreneurial skills of everyone involved. The project gives the opportunity to bring the idea and method of open innovation to the different regions in order to support a strong and sustainable innovation culture.

The DA-SPACE process and the advantages for companies and young talents can be watched in the following video:

Link to Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_tQuIbULDE

With the first international Demo Day in Pula we have successfully completed the first round of the Open innovation labs. The first round showed that the topic of open innovation generates great interest, all teams involved have worked on different case studies and developed creative solutions.

On a transnational level, impressive figures have already been achieved in the DA-SPACE project:

7 open innovation laboratories

7 local Demo Days

64 Challenges

50 Teams

233 young talents and

280 hours of workshops and trainings

In October the labs are going to start the second round. We are looking forward to new talents and interesting challenges, which will be published soon on our project webpage.