RIS4Danu: a ground-breaking initiative under Horizon Europe
BAK S3 Association is a proud partner of the RIS4Danu project, a ground-breaking initiative under Horizon Europe that aims to facilitate a green and social-sustainable-technological transition by developing strategic business plans for the reopening 21 closed industrial sites in the Danube region. We are leveraging the existing smart specialization methodology (S3) and developing it into an evidence-based approach of sustainable smart specialization to support the transition to a green economy. Together with our project partners, we are defining transformation goals and aligning transformative activities, creating strategic business development plans, developing policy recommendations, and creating a database of international best practices for reopened industrial sites fostering a green structural transformation.
An Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP) with workshops at each site including stakeholders from the quadruple helix ensures the embedding of the revitalisation of the industrial sites into the Regional Innovation System (RIS) and the structural transformation to a green economy.
As a key partner of the esteemed RIS4Danu project, on the initiative of BAK Economics the BAK S3 Association provides its experiences in designing and implementing S3 into the project and takes responsibly for the core task of EDP workshops.
BAK Economics and the BAK S3A designed, ran and actively participated in a number of highly successful EDP workshop within the RIS4Danu project already. The Entrepreneurial Discovery process in the Hajdú-Bihar County in Hungary revealed the need and opportunity for an innovation centre on management and storage for renewable energies including large-scale test and demonstration facilities in the city of Debrecen . For the second site, a former Hemp Mill in the more rural area of Komádi, a reusing for hemp production, but with a modern, more sustainable, and bio-oriented production process is most promising. In April 2023, the RIS4Danu EDP workshop tour stopped in Ústecký kraj, in the south-west of the CzechRepublic. Two workshops in the cities of Most and Ústí nad Labem emphasized the opportunities of reusing coal mine activities for a large-scale hydrogen innovation hub as well as the importance of the involvement of SMEs and corresponding facilities in the transformation process. In May 2023, a highly successful workshop was held in the Banská Bystrica region of Slovakia. There, our workshop team leveraged the region’s forestry strengths and developed the idea of a "wood craft/processing campus" with the goal of fruitful collaboration among producers, designers, researchers, and education providers for various wood-related materials and products.
The next upcoming S3/EDP workshop will be held on September 8, 2023 in Podravje - Maribor in Slovenia.
Photo: Dr. Andrea Wagner, BAK Economics AG, Workshop in the Banská Bystrica region