Serbian European Digital Innovation Hub on AI

ongoing

Regional socio-economic inequalities have worsened over the past two decades in Serbia and are now among the highest in Europe. Substantial barriers to SME development prevented the less developed regions from mobilising the power of domestic entrepreneurship to challenge incumbent firms which benefitted from their locational advantage in Belgrade and other northern districts. With the transition to a knowledge economy based on digital agenda, Belgrade and Vojvodina benefitted from the high concentration of high technology employment, R&D and research personnel. This gave a further push to regional divergence. To overcome the renewed growth of regional inequalities generated by the structural shifts to the knowledge economy and the digital businesses that are fast emerging, a S4AI_HUB brings better distributed version of the knowledge economy in which the benefits of the digital transformation to the less developed regions of Serbia is going to be spread. These regions in Serbia need to enhance the uptake of AI in its key priorities defined by RIS3 and participate in the European ecosystem of excellence and trust. Therefore, it is essential to use and transfer the knowledge from cutting-edge research into business practice, support digitalisation in companies, especially SMEs, delivering innovation from startups and university to value chain and closely related issues of the qualified and retrained workforce. These regions in Serbia can build on its industrial and entrepreneurial tradition and the high technological intelligence of the population in this respect. It is why a highly diversified consortium consisted from 7 partners from BSOs, R&D, and the private sector, along with 13 Associated Partners (national level institutions, regional innovation centres, R&D, and academia) was established. This consortium will provide essential support to SMEs and public institutions in their digital transformation targeting at least 300 SMEs and public institutions.