Creation of a European Strategic Cluster Partnership (ESCP) for the internationalisation of cross-domain Smart City Solutions Powered by ICT Technologies (sensor systems, data processing platforms).

ended

The SmartCityTech proposal wants to establish a new European Strategic Cluster Partnership (ESCP) in the cross-sector emerging industry of Smart City solutions powered by ICT technologies. The four cluster partners of this proposal (DSP Valley (BE), GAIA (ES), BICCnet (DE) and BrainsBusiness (DK)) will leverage their ongoing joint project activity in the FP7 CLINES project (Cluster-based Innovation through Embedded Systems Technology for Smart Cities, 2013-2016) to build the SmartCityTech ESCP. The ESCP will go beyond CLINES itself, through a geographic and thematic extension with 2 new and complementary cluster partners. Thematically, the ESCP will not only cover the embedded technologies addressed in CLINES, but also the backend (big) data ICT platforms and systems. Moreover, the ESCP will reinforce the focus on the challenges and applications relevant for the cross-sector emerging industry of Smart City solutions. The main objective of the SmartCityTech ESCP is to strengthen the internationalisation activities for the cluster member SMEs, in particular towards specific third countries. Smart Cities form an excellent topic for a new ESCP to boost SME internationalisation in third countries, because they are a world-encompassing reality requiring cross-sector co-operation between a wide range of stakeholders. Many emerging Smart Cities are located outside Europe (Asia, US, Latin America), so this is where the solutions need to be delivered in a co-operation of expert European companies and local parties. The SmartCityTech project will address its objective of establishing an ESCP for third-country internationalisation of Smart City solutions by creating an internationalisation strategy plan (work package STRATEGISE), followed by its implementation roadmap (work package REALISE). Both the plan and the roadmap then need to be committed to by the intended 6 partners of the ESCP by signing and executing the SmartCityTech Partnership Agreement (work package FORMALISE).