Valuable inputs for the EU Digitisation Community from Stuttgart’s DIH Day

The Digital Innovation Hubs Day, which took place in Stuttgart (Germany) on May 14th 2019, brought together more than 70 representatives from European Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) and was focussed on networking between DIHs situated in Baden-Württemberg and its neighbouring countries France, Switzerland and Austria.

In particular, its aim was to compare the different concepts of these initiatives, to share experience gained so far and to explore possible collaborations between them reaching out to the overall European network of DIHs.

Many interactive “share and learn” sessions presented the concepts, impacts and further plans of their individual initiatives and discussed experiences and future cooperation possibilities.

Chairman Max Lemke (DG CNECT, European Commission) set out the European Context and Perspective of the DIH community and keynote speaker Peter Mendler (Ministry of Economic Affairs, Baden-Württemberg) expressed the desire for concerted actions and a sustainable network supporting the digital transformation of the regional, national and European industry.

Mayte Carracedo and Rainer Günzler, representatives of the European Digitisation initiatives “ICT-Innovations  for Manufacturing SMEs” (focussing on digitised production processes) and “Smart Anything Everywhere” (focussing on smart products and services) respectively, introduced the offers, cooperation and funding possibilities and further benefits.

Afternoon sessions addressed topics like optimised DIH offer and organisation, fostering the European network of DIHs and sustainability of digital initiatives and their projects. A particular focus was set on the needs of SMEs and how they can benefit from DIHs and information about special funding instruments addressing SMEs (like “Cascade Funding”) and an outline on how to apply to the related Open Calls completed the agenda.

The event, which as a dissemination action of the EU funded project “Smart4Europe” under SAE, was organised by Hahn-Schickard and Steinbeis 2i who will summarise the results as part of a “White Paper” addressing politics and industry, as per the complete  information on the event.