ecoplus. The Business Agency of Lower Austria and BIOPRO Baden-Württemberg invite you to the international online workshop "Building a Sustainable Network for Smart SMEs in the Alpine Region" on the 3rd of November 2020. The workshop is organized in cooperation with our partners in the EU project Smart SMEs. We would be glad to welcome you as a participant and gain your expertise for our event.

The EU project Smart SMEs aims to improve the deployment of digital solutions in small and medium-sized enterprises and thus to increase the competitiveness of SMEs in the Alpine region, which belong to natural fiber-based value chains like agriculture, forestry and wood. Examples of such solutions can be found here.

With this workshop, we give you the opportunity for networking with actors and our partners from Austria, Italy, Slovenia and Switzerland and for establishing cooperation across the borders.

Target group:

The event is aimed at "facilitators" who work at interfaces between companies and providers of digital technologies. These are experts who know the needs of the agricultural, forestry and wood sectors, who are in direct contact with such SMEs and support them in innovation, technology transfer and digital transformation. Examples are cluster managers, founders of digital innovation hubs or members of strategic research and innovation partnerships.

The workshop covers the following aspects:

• How can SMEs be supported in acquiring the necessary knowledge and skills for digital transformation?
• How can policy makers support and promote digital transformation of SMEs?
• What is the impact of COVID-19 on value chains in the agricultural and forestry/wood sectors?
• How can digital transformation help SMEs in the current situation and how can this process be supported (best practice examples)?

The event is in English and free of charge. An agenda will be shortly provided. Please register via boyarintseva(at)bio-pro.de by the 25th of October. You are welcome to forward this invitation to potentially interested parties.

Agenda

09:00  Welcome and introduction to the meeting

09:05  Tour de table: short introduction of participants’ name, organisation, role in the project

09:20  What is project “Smart SMEs” about, short presentation of the main insights so far:

• Mapping of the state of play and needs regarding digitalization
• Collection of good practices and existing tools
• Action Plan ​​​​​

09:50  Digital transformation in the renewable resources sector: Short input on challenges and good practices from the regional experts à 5 minutes each (10 minutes per region, inluding Q&A):

• How do the experts support SMEs in the renewable resources sector in their digital transformation: challenges, good practice and failures?

10:30  Discussion with participants:

• How did COVID crisis change supply chains in my sector / eco system?
• How did it change the use of digital tools?
• Summary: Are there similar challenges and needs? Is there a potential for (improved) cooperation?

10:50  Break

11:00 Discussion on needs and further collaboration in a network: Is it welcome by the participants? What could be existing networks where we could integrate our activities?

• Regional level (e.g. clusters + DIH)
• Interregional level (EUSALP)
• European level

12:00  Wrap up, next steps

The workshop will be moderated by Lucia Seel, international cluster expert.