The Interreg project SWW showcased enterprises manufacturing work wear in the Baltic Sea region how to introduce mass customisation and integrate IT technology into clothing, and by this to increase their competitiveness against new producers and cheap imports from Asian markets.

The Interreg project Smart Blue Regions helped public authorities of coastal regions at the Baltic Sea review and improve their research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation to trigger sustainable blue growth in the marine and maritime sectors.

The Interreg project Ecodesign Circle successfully introduced ecodesign thinking and acting to design centres and numerous design companies in five countries around the Baltic Sea, as well as to the Bureau of European Design Associations - a strong move towards a circular economy in Europe.

The Interreg project BalticTRAM successfully connected companies from the Baltic Sea region with universities, research institutes, and large scale research infrastructures across eight countries and helped 15 SMEs solve specific challenges in product development, e.g. for sustainable cement, better medical test kits, more durable electronics and longer lasting batteries.

In the Interreg project SEMPRE, charity organisations, trainers and universities gave social services in disadvantaged rural areas of the Baltic Sea region a new role: to empower people in need instead of offering help - this brought happiness and hope to elderly people, migrants, single parents and other vulnerable groups.

The Interreg project EmpInno helped twelve medium sized regions around the Baltic Sea to improve their regional innovation strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3) by providing strategy owners (e.g. public authorities) and strategy implementers (e.g. science parks, universities, business intermediaries) with peer knowledge and by boosting their cooperation with business.

The Interreg project CM helped audio-visual and videogame industry boost their businesses and enter new markets by teaming them up with traditional sectors of education, tourism and healthcare, and innovating their products with audio-visual content.

The project BFCC engaged four hospitals supported by business development organisations and universities in creating a joint registry to store and process data about bone fractures in four countries. Medical companies used this data for improving their products to offer better treatment possibilities for patients, thus preparing our ageing society for the numbers of bone fractures and linked health disorders to increase.

The project Baltic Science Network strengthened the political ownership of a joint, macro-regional approach towards science policy by setting up a network of ministries and other public bodies responsible for higher education, science and research policies in seven countries around the Baltic Sea.

In this Interreg project, furniture manufacturers, designers, architectures and other experts gain knowledge about the senior’s needs and preferences in order to win a competitive edge in designing customised and smart products for seniors, and by this to improve their quality of life.

The project InnoFruit created a sustainable network of fruit-growing companies to make them more successful and competitive across the Baltic Sea region markets thanks to the exchange of innovative solutions.

Through the project BSR Stars S3, business support organisations, public authorities and policy makers in several regions around the Baltic Sea know more about how to turn their smart specialisation strategies for advancing bio and circular economies into action.

Business intermediaries, owner-managers and universities jointly develop and apply innovative tools and methods for business counselling that respond to the specific needs of owner-managers of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Owner-managers of SMEs tend to be driven by different considerations than SMEs run by employed managers, for example, their own family’s well-being, the employees’ situations and lack of time for developing their own managerial skills.

The project attempts to help the public sector in leading smart specialisation processes in their regions and to connect innovation networks across regions. It helps find solutions tackling the fragmentation of regional systems of innovation looking for entrepreneurial discoveries within such topics as blue growth, bio and circular economy, advanced production methods and technologies for energy efficiency.

Many small and medium sized enterprises face a crucial moment when the business gets transferred, e.g. when the owner retires and a new one takes over. Every year, more jobs are lost due to failed business transfers than new jobs are created in start-ups. The project improves the competences of business support organisations in terms of business transfers. They jointly design and apply innovative tools to better support upcoming business successors.

Strokes, obesity, and heart and lung diseases are among the health challenges in Europe. This implies a new service development approach in the public health sector. The project helps public health authorities in cities around the Baltic Sea to better promote healthy lifestyle by developing and testing a model that public health authorities can apply in prevention intervention planning. The model combines methods such as focus groups, motivational interviewing, eHealth applications, chatbots and health games.

The goal of the project is to support smart, sustainable and inclusive growth of the bioeconomy in rural areas of the Baltic Sea region. RDI2CluB aims to help innovation actors apply EU smart specialisation approaches to their specific field and region. The transnational partnership and network of the project plans to, for instance, support new business development in rural areas and create bio-business hubs to improve innovation management.

The project establishes a network of underground laboratories across the Baltic Sea region, which works as an open innovation platform facilitating scientific technology transfer and best practices exchange. It improves access of small and medium sized enterprises to the laboratories and exploits potential for incubating innovative businesses in various fields, e.g. mining, tunnel construction, radiation shielding systems testing, and thermal energy production.

ProVaHealth stimulates cooperation among health laboratories in the Baltic Sea region, which test new products and technologies in real-life contexts. The project shares best practices to improve business models of the labs and helps open access to the services for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) from the entire Baltic Sea region to ensure health innovation and growth of health SMEs with global potential.

Biomarkers measure cellular, biochemical or molecular changes in human tissues, cells or fluids, and contribute to future diagnostics and treatment. The development of biomarkers is time consuming and expensive, requiring the involvement of industry from early stages to better direct the research. The BIC platform facilitates knowledge and best practice exchange, offering tools that support the various phases of a commercialization process and maturity assessment.

No electronic product can be successfully placed in global markets if it does not conform with international standards. This typically requires extensive testing of product prototypes. In the project, eight universities from the Baltic Sea region set up an innovation support network to provide testing and consultation for small and medium sized enterprises in the electronics sector during early product development.

There is a growing interest in consumer clean technology, which is about reducing the environmental burden of consumption and is related to resource scarcity, rising energy and fuel costs, digitalisation and automatisation. The project helps exploit arising business opportunities in consumer clean technology for small and medium sized enterprises, start-ups and intermediaries in the Baltic Sea region by shaping models for networking, partnerships and cultural cooperation.

Business incubator organisations are crucial supporters for entrepreneurs, start-ups and small and medium sized enterprises that drive economic growth and create jobs. In the project, incubators from all countries around the Baltic Sea work together to improve and strengthen their management and support capacity, i.e. to jointly nurture new skills, help create new companies, and to support in opening up new markets.

The project aims to boost transnational cooperation among industry, the research & development sector, and authorities in employing smart specialisation strategies in regions in the eastern parts of the Baltic Sea region. It promotes mutual learning, sharing best practices and translating smart specialisation strategies into practical joint actions of small and medium sized enterprises.

Since 2014, the satellites and sensors of the European Copernicus programme have delivered Earth observation data free of charge to anyone. The wealth of data holds tremendous potential for new services in the environmental, transport, energy and other sectors. The project qualifies regional science and technology parks in the Baltic Sea region in running tailored acceleration programmes for small and medium sized enterprises in the emerging Earth Observation market.

Games are the most dynamic creative industry worldwide but business support is often unspecific or targeted at communications technology or media. The project prepares business incubators to effectively support game start-ups. It tests how gaming can be transferred to other industries such as the health sector. It also initiates a change of the business framework to make it more favourable for the game industry.

Local food producers still rely mostly on direct contacts to consumers as they often have difficulties in reaching catering, food processing and retail sectors that tend to rely on large food supply chains. The project aims to establish a business to business distribution model that supports local food networks in rural areas of ten countries in the Baltic Sea region and to ensure smooth and short supply chains, opportunities for growth, and improved business performance.

A traditional procurement model does not consider re-use or recycling of purchased goods or services. The project promotes a circular procurement model, which takes into account the lifecycle of products throughout the supply chain. The development of tools, exchange of best practices, training and building capacity among procurers, suppliers and policy makers for circular products stimulates the development of new business models.

The project helps speed up the Baltic Sea region’s transition to a single digital market. Three common challenges are covered: uptake of information and communication technologies in the business sector, innovation and interoperability of public services, and cooperation and coordination of digital policies on the macro-regional level. Industrial small and medium sized enterprises, industry associations and policy makers are enabled to push for a faster uptake of digital solutions.

The project helps regions in nine countries to apply research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3) by sharing best practices and knowledge of EU RIS3 experts (Committee of Regions, EU Joint Research Centre) and co-creating concepts for the RIS3 implementation. The project focuses on active healthy ageing, digitalisation in smart city, climate change and circular economy.

Innovative businesses such as ship design, marine engineering and biotechnology require access to large scale computing to process large quantities of data. This access is currently limited to global enterprises and large research centres. The project BalticLSC creates a supercomputing environment comprising hardware prototypes, software tools and application recommendations. It offers these services to small and medium sized enterprises for new product development. In this way, small research centres can use their computing resources more efficiently.

The Creative Ports project brings together public authorities and business support organisations, cultural institutes and researchers to stimulate the internationalisation of the cultural and creative sectors. The majority of design, art, fashion, publishing, audio visual and gaming companies in the Baltic Sea region are medium-sized and often lack the networks to access international markets. Creative Ports provides knowledge, facilitates exchange and develops tools to train and connect business support organisations with public authorities.

The INforM project provides support to small and medium sized mechatronics and mechanical engineering companies in the ongoing digital transformation process. The continuous digitalisation of value chains called Industry 4.0 brings with it great challenges for smaller companies. The project plans to enable companies to benefit from the trend towards smart factories, which operate mainly based on intelligent, IT and web-based processes.

Cities in the Baltic Sea region are challenged by emerging societal and demographic changes and a growing need for sustainable development of neighbourhoods. Active co-creation among citizens and between citizens and authorities can be a way to overcome increasing exclusion of socially sensitive groups, such as the elderly and minors, and to advance Baltic Sea region social innovation. The UrbCulturalPlanning project uses cultural events and gaming methods to engage people into urban social innovation, and to compile a toolbox with good practices for other cities.

The Healthy Boost project addresses the health burden of city residents due to unhealthy lifestyles. Cities such as Poznan, Klaipeda, Jelgava, Tartu and Turku experiment with different methods of community participation, health learning or cross-sectoral cooperation. The main objective of the project is to make urban policies for health and well-being more innovative, more effective and more integrated. This includes work on cross-sectoral cooperation with potential to be used in other fields as well.

The InnoCAPE project designs a cooperation model to develop a digital innovation ecosystem in the Baltic Sea region by exploiting the potential of the continuous digitalisation of value chains called Industry 4.0. The project helps public authorities create favourable conditions for digital innovation hubs (DIHs) that serve as intermediary bodies bringing together Research & Development and industry into digital industrial platforms. By bridging existing gaps, DIHs can efficiently implement Industry 4.0 policies, contribute to a better connected digital single market, and improve competitiveness of the region.

The project promotes industrial symbiosis, a concept for sustainable regional development, across the Baltic Sea region. Industrial symbiosis means to connect companies from different industries in order to use one company’s waste, in the form of e.g. energy, ingredients or materials, as a resource for the next company. The project establishes peer-to-peer exchange for industrial symbiosis practitioners. It develops new business and finance models and sets up the BSR Industrial Symbiosis Council as a platform for dialogue and policy learning.

Bankruptcies lead to economic and social insecurity and tax revenue decrease. The Restart BSR project brings together innovation actors in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to offer 'soft' innovation support to small and medium sized enterprises that are experiencing stagnation and are heading towards bankruptcy. Apart from restarting businesses onto a new path of growth, the project kicks off policy dialogue to frame measures to support innovation and growth of companies facing stagnation or financial distress in the Baltic Sea region.

The StratKIT project is about making the procurement of public catering services more sustainable. Public authorities have a large purchasing power and have the ability to give clear signals to the market towards green growth and circular economy. However, public procurement is a complex task and good practices in the Baltic Sea region are mostly isolated. StratKIT brings together public authorities, catering service providers and researchers in a network to set up a toolkit and an online open knowledge platform for sustainable public catering.

The silver economy related to products and services aiming at the ageing society creates considerable business opportunities. The OSIRIS project designs an innovative cooperation model to improve smart specialisation approaches and market uptake of innovative products and services dedicated to ageing people, e.g. related to health, tourism or their built living environment. Smart Silver Labs in six regions around the Baltic Sea support innovation actors in generating new silver products and services viable to the market. The project sets up a Digital Silver Hub to ensure exchange of new knowledge and business schemes across the borders.

Participatory budgeting is a process of democratic decision-making in which ordinary people take part in preparing and adopting a municipal or public budget. In the Baltic Sea region, only a few municipalities have applied participatory budgeting to date. A typical type of citizen in such a process is male, politically active, well-educated, and 35-65 years old. The objective of EmPaci is to get more municipalities involved and mobilise different types of citizens by building municipal capacities, transnational clusters and municipality-citizen cooperation.

CAROTS aims to establish a new type of private or public-private company in the Baltic Sea region: Commercial Analytical Research Organisations (CARO). CAROs, as intermediary bodies between industry and academia, provide enterprises with much quicker yet complete assistance in analytical research in the fields of e.g. new materials, nanotech and life sciences.

The progressing age of societies in the Baltic Sea region poses a societal and economic challenge to adjust market offers to the needs of the elderly. BaltSe@nioR 2.0 brings together municipalities, universities, businesses and NGOs to create new business models as well as demo spaces in public locations furnished with smart furniture. Through this, the project aims to trigger public institutions and manufacturing companies in the region in starting a transformation of museums, theatres, city halls, restaurants and other public spaces into friendlier places for seniors.

A lack of strong ties between small and medium sized enterprises and research centres hampers eco-innovations in the Baltic sea region. In parallel, there is untapped potential of implementing sustainable strategies in business, the example of which is a cohesive delivery of products and services. The ECOLABNET project sets up a network across the value chain of products that integrates product-service system designers, bio-based material researchers, 3D print technology providers, eco-branding specialists and business developers in order to drive sustainable eco-innovations, e.g. in medical diagnostics and electronics.

The maple syrup industry has brought jobs and income to many rural areas in Canada. Mushrooms, berries, tree oils and other biological products from the Baltic Sea region forests could have the very same effect. NovelBaltic wants to increase the competitiveness of such non-timber forest products from the Baltic Sea region. Academia and business cooperate to provide small and medium sized enterprises with new methods that certify the geographical origin of their products faster and cheaper and to evaluate business opportunities in Asian markets.

EmpInno Monitor S3 improves the monitoring systems of the smart specialisation strategies (RIS3) of seven regions around the Baltic Sea. The predecessor project EmpInno (S3 Empowering for Innovation and Growth in Medium-Sized Cities and Regions ) concluded that authorities responsible for smart specialisation strategies should test different approaches to monitor their RIS3. Adjusting the monitoring systems shall lead to a higher efficiency and effectiveness of the regional innovation policies and finally a more innovative Baltic Sea region.

A circular economy minimises waste and makes the most of resources by minimising resource input, waste, emission and energy leakage by slowing, closing, and narrowing energy and material loops. The project EcoDesign Circle recently set up an ecodesign learning factory and an ecodesign audit and sprint consultancy which increased the competences of design centers, industrial designers and companies to develop circular products. EcoDesign Circle 4.0 goes beyond products by targeting services for a circular economy (e.g. car-sharing) and spreads the knowledge gained in a train the trainer package.

The way how countries around the Baltic Sea fund science and research is very different in terms of governance levels and available budgets. The project Baltic Science Network (BSN) provided science ministries, funding agencies and university networks with a platform to discuss joint approaches. The main objective of the follow-up, BSN_powerhouse, is to help ministries and agencies to design transnational support programmes in three research fields: photon and neutron science, life sciences and welfare state. The project implements and tests two support mechanisms, one to connect research infrastructures and one to connect researchers.

30 micro projects in eight countries which aimed to empower disadvantaged people were the result of the SEMPRE project. Social workers learned how to use empowerment tools such as the social business model canvas or the theory of change to involve e.g. single parents, handicapped or migrants into creating new ideas for social services and testing them. In SEMPRE Accelerators, the partners focus on eight of the most promising micro projects. They turn the micro projects into successful, self-sustaining social start-ups that consistently offer services and/or products on local and regional markets of the Baltic Sea region.

Smart specialisation helps regions to use their strengths to boost growth and prosperity. Yet, many regions lack methods or institutional frameworks to implement it successfully. The BSR S3 Ecosystem platform aligns smart specialisation initiatives to better steer investments across the Baltic Sea region. By sharing best practices, it activates research and academic communities, industry and public entities to strengthen the regional innovation ecosystem. The platform builds on the experiences of Interreg Baltic Sea Region’s projects LARS,BSR Stars S3, Smart-up BSR and GoSmart BSR, as well as S34 Growth, BIOREGIO, ClusterFy and TraCS3, co-founded by Interreg Europe.

Biobord is a digital innovation platform for bioeconomy developers, which was developed in the Interreg project RDI2CluB. In ConnectedByBiobord, the platform is upgraded and extended. At the same time, the partnership implements transnational innovation pilots derived from the Joint Action Plan elaborated in the Interreg project RDI2CluB. The target regions are Central Finland (Finland), Inland (Norway), Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship (Poland), Vidzeme (Latcia), Värmland (Sweden), Skåne (Sweden) and Pärnu (Estonia).

The project GoSmart&Excel BSR helps SMEs to become more innovative and to internationalise their businesses, in the long term. It teaches innovation actors in the Baltic Sea region (and beyond) to practically and jointly apply the Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) approach. The project brings the key outcomes of the GoSmart BSR project into use, in particular the transnational smart specialisation strategy methodology and the transnational innovation brokerage system.

The GRETA project develops policy tools for sustainable Smart Specialization innovation strategies in the Baltic Sea region to support the transformation of society and economy in line with the European Green Deal. GRETA builds on experiences with methods to support growth developed in the LARS project with environmental targets in two areas: energy (reduction of CO2 emissions, green energy production) and circular economy.

Underground laboratories in the Baltic Sea region are not utilized to their full potential even though world leading research organizations and industrial companies are nearby. In order to use the available lab space better, the BSUIN project has developed service concepts for the underground laboratories and an open-access platform which characterizes them. These concepts and the platform will be further tested, evaluated and improved within the EUL project. Better information about the laboratories and their business opportunities is provided to regional development agencies and potential new customers from academia and business.

Small and medium sized enterprises in the medical sector are currently hampered in bringing new biomarkers to the market. Both the EU Regulation on in vitro diagnostics of 2017 and established requirements towards industrial processes are challenging to them. BiC BRIDGE helps smaller players of the biomarker development sector to streamline their biomarker development, and provides guidance, both on the regulatory framework and on the necessary steps linked to commercialisation.

Many small and medium sized enterprises are facing a crucial moment when a business gets transferred, e.g. when the owner retires and a new one takes over. Every year, more jobs are lost due to failed business transfers than new jobs are created in start-ups. In the project INBETS BSR, partners developed models for successful business transfers have been developed in INBETS BSR. Now its extension project InBets+ is organising events and training courses, to train small and medium sized enterprises all across the Baltic Sea region in successful business transfers.