After five months of enhancing innovative thinking and entrepreneurship skills among young talents, an ending event of DA-SPACE Open Innovation Lab cycle at Juraj Dobrila University of Pula was held on April 5th, 2019. “Local Demo Day” gathered Juraj Dobrila University of Pula and Region of Istria project teams and all participants of the second cycle of Open Innovation Lab in Croatia. Within “Local Demo Day” solvers presented their results, co-creation processes and innovative solutions to stakeholders, and the jury selected the best project and winning team – students Nikolina Gerić and Roman Ivezić, who participated in the 2nd International Demo Day in Ulm, Germany.

Within the Entrepreneuship training activity in this cycle, the UNIPU lab Manager with the assistance of the ISTRIA team members had carried on a Study visit to Uniline company. Uniline was one of the SME participants in the previous OIL Cycle, and during the study visit they had introduced our young talents with the company but also expressed their satisfaction with their participation. Besides the good practices exchange, we had the chance to meet one of our 1st Cycle participants, who is now a valued member of the Uniline team. During this field visit, we were lucky enough to be joined by the two Romanian exchange students who served as a great addition to our lab, even for this short period of time.

Beside the cycle, a good example of a successful cooperation of the academic and the business sector is shown at the final conference of DA-SPACE project, which was held on May 15th, 2019. Ms. Tamara Kiršić, assistant director at Istrian Development Agency, and a mentor in the second lab’s cycle, participated in a panel discussion “How can politics support open innovation and entrepreneurship?”, which was an opportunity for sharing the experiences and conclusions about the project results as well.