SME’s full ST®EAM ahead!

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The transformation to a climate-neutral society is a central challenge for Europe. Natural resources are becoming scarce and the switch to a more circular economy is a must. The creation of new materials from sustainable sources and from residual biological streams can lead to major opportunities in the design and development process of innovative products: fruit waste, for example, can become in this way the sustainable raw material for new designer furniture. The products of the future will not only be sustainable in terms of the raw materials used, but also because the design process itself will take into account in advance the desired added value for the end-users and for society as a whole. In order to shape this future, interdisciplinary and euregional cooperation is an absolute added value. The interdisciplinary cooperation ensures that the available knowledge and expertise is optimally exchanged and deployed. Within this project, scientific and technological expertise on new sustainable materials is brought together with important developments and insights from the design sector to stimulate new forms of entrepreneurship. Within the Euregio Meuse-Rhine there is a wealth of existing expertise within these different sectors. There are various knowledge institutions with a different specialization in new sustainable materials or there are several organisations with a wide range of expertise on design thinking. This diversity of expertise can be shared through this project and deployed across the specific regions. SMEs can strongly benefit for a shift towards a more sustainable future. For business, it is a necessity to go along with these changing social developments. SMEs are a crucial engine for putting the circular economy into practice. However, SMEs still have insufficient knowledge of the recent technological innovations concerning new materials from residual flows and have limited experience with innovative design processes and new forms of entrepreneurship. The project will focus on SMEs of clothing and interior design, construction industry and the food sector. This scope offers a lot of business potential (for example: > 3500 SME branches Limburg (BE), > 3000 province of Liège, > 17000 Limburg (NL), >3200 Aachen) and strives for 2% of SMEs (>500) to benefit directly from the project activities. The central objective of this project is therefore to coach and guide SMEs in this transition to a more circular economy. In addition, SMEs learn to discover the added value of an interdisciplinary collaboration across the Euregion boundaries and across the boundaries of different business sectors. The concrete output of this interdisciplinary co-creation are 40 prototypes. These prototypes are designed in line with the real needs and challenges of a large group of SMEs. Both the designed prototypes and the methodology of interdisciplinary collaboration are inspiring for companies from the Meuse-Rhine Euroregion and are accessible through the website and the different project-events. Even after the project has expired, companies, knowledge institutions and design partners will be able to find each other by means of the project portal website. To achieve the central objective, the project provides for the following activities: Mapping the challenges, needs and opportunities for circular economy in the Meuse-Rhine Euroregion. Intake meetings and community events to explore and to refine needs of companies with regard to the circular economy. Bootcamps and specific technological, design-oriented, entrepreneurship-oriented coaching sessions to facilitate and guide the interdisciplinary design process of the prototypes. Testing and development of the desired prototypes (both from the technological and design-viewpoint). Additional coaching to reinforce 10 prototypes to full business cases. An educational and community outreach process in which teachers, students (higher and secondary education) and citizens are also actively involved in the product innovations. After all, the worlds of entrepreneurs, researchers and designers need to be connected with citizens and with schools in order to guarantee social support and a sustainable future. Crucial for the future recruitment of sufficient talents in the SMEs is that a broad culture of entrepreneurship arises in the Euregio. Broad communication and inspiring dissemination of the stories in the prototypes and inspiring collaboration methods. The expected result of the project is that more SMEs will be inspired by the concrete prototypes and cooperation models to contribute to a more circular economy by interdisciplinary collaboration between the different sectors (design, technology) and between the involved Euregions.

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