Baltic Blue Biotechnology Alliance

Closed

The project will bring together blue biotechnology actors from across the Baltic Sea Region to develop innovative marine biotechnology based products and services in response to the EU Sustainable Blue Growth Agenda for the Baltic Sea Region—a blueprint for harnessing the region’s strengths to boost innovation and growth in the maritime area. The potential of blue biotechnology is recognised as significant but still immature and therefore in need of a more strategic approach for development across the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). The project aims to empower the participating research institutes, SMEs and business clusters to reach the critical mass required for action and global competitiveness by systematically pooling the national capabilities. Project partners will closely work together with two main target groups to address their needs: 1) business, 2) research institutes, innovation agencies and business parks. In order to kick-start the project and to ensure target group oriented services and related activities from the project start, a number of case owners with good prospects to deliver successful blue biotechnology products have already been integrated into the project consortium. Together with case owners, as well as additional clients to be identified on a competitive basis through a series of stakeholder engagement actions, the project will develop and implement optimal transnational pathways, making efficient use of and providing comprehensive access to a variety of facilities, (bio) resources and expertise available within the BSR and beyond. The cases, as well as knowledge from similar initiatives in other European regions and topical fields, will in turn inform the partners on how to best refine their common integrated service offer and how to overcome legal and financial barriers in transnational science-business cooperation. The service offer will be combined with joint marketing activities, market surveys, legal and business advice as well as providing recommendations on future research and facility needs within the BSR. This targeted and need-based service approach, the delivery of concrete success stories, the continuous expansion of its client/partner base and the development of a financially viable model will ensure that the project functions autonomously beyond the lifetime of the project. Thus, the project will open up the resource intensive field of blue biotechnology to new actors and speed up business development and market uptake of its products. The project will hence improve global competitiveness of the BSR and foster the transition to environmentally friendly production.

Medium