Baltic Blue Biotechnology Alliance+

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The main objective of the ALLIANCE project was to accelerate the development of Blue Biotechnology products and services by systematically pooling the capabilities of its participating partners. The project was also designed to develop and test services, and to develop a strategy for providing and financing such services beyond the projects’ actual lifetime. The ALLIANCE has truly lived up to these objectives with fully developed service offer and related business plan. The ALLIANCE+ extension project now aims to operationalize this business plan by opening the ALLIANCE network beyond the reach of the limited partnership of the ALLIANCE main stage project. Thus all interested blue biotechnology actors will have the opportunity to benefit from the ALLIANCE main project experience. At the same time the new actors being therefore brought into the ALLIANCE network will in turn also benefit the existing ALLIANCE members and cases as it widens the area of expertise and resources, which is necessary for successful blue biotechnology product & service development. The ALLIANCE+ project will therefore stabilize and secure the resources required for providing an ongoing ALLIANCE network and service offer and thus enable continuous development of future blue biotechnology products. Moreover, the ALLIANCE+ aims to recruit and train new experts to act as blue detectives, mentors and advisors within and in conjunction with the partners of the current ALLIANCE network. Future mentors may come from R&D institutions but also established blue biotech companies. The knowledge gained within the main stage ALLIANCE project will be transferred into a ‘mentors’ training package and handbook, coupled with the organization of three transnational training events. Selected cases from the ALLIANCE main stage project will be ‘used’ as case studies to implement the lessons learned during the main stage project and for training newly recruited mentors. Through ongoing and follow-up coaching ALLIANCE+ partners will ensure that new mentors will apply the knowledge gained. In addition, the ALLIANCE+ aims to identify and reach out to strategic investors (incl. EU, national, regional public authorities and their funding programmes; blue biotech companies, private foundations) to provide for the ongoing funding required to maintain the ALLIANCE network service offer. To this end ALLIANCE+ partners will showcase the added value created by the ALLIANCE not only for start-ups, but also the participating research institutes, business clusters, companies and regions in general. Selected actors/programmes will be individually approached. This may be in the form of meetings, but also include the development of written applications and offers. The resulting commitments (either ‘in-kind’ by seconding mentors, offering services or financial support) will enable the ALLIANCE+ to effectively operate on a long term basis without any further support by INTERREG.

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