Boost4BSO

Boost4 BSO project, funded by the Interreg Central Europe programme, addresses the Call topic “Industry 4.0/Adv. Manufacturing”, to improve knowledge build-up and sustainable knowledge transfer linkages between CE BSOs. The project consortium consists of seven BSOs and one Excellence center from Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Croatia, Italy, Poland, committed to jointly developing a comprehensive BSO competence pack and implementation toolbox to support local SMEs at different levels of transformation towards I4.0.

A novel snowball mechanism will be demonstrated for downstreaming the project results to numerous CE BSOs. The main project objective is to allow CE BSOs, as key and main innovation system actors, to provide effective and efficient support services for local companies covering all key aspects of transformation towards I4.0. This will help CE SMEs that nowadays don't have the basic skills on the potential of I4.0 to purpose answer at their own transformation demand and develop I4.0 related business strategies. For this purpose, Boost4BSO will integrate the training curriculum from InnoPeer AVM with the product/service innovation approach from Things+ (both Interreg CE), enriching this BSO competence pack with practical SME upscaling cases from IoT4Industry (H2020).

These core projects succeeded in piloting highly promising capacity building methodologies for SMEs, however, the interaction between companies and local innovation support actors could only be addressed at a case-to-case level so far. This, because the deficits that prevent SMEs from taking up I4.0 business opportunities can only be overcome through interventions and transf. support, regional BSOs - as local innovation intermediaries - will now be addressed as the main Boost4BSO target group.

Boost4BSO combines an innovative systemic approach of co-developing I4.0-related BSO capacities and SME competences to develop a comprehensive package of BSO support services, adaptable to different levels of SME maturity, and demonstrates a novel downstream mechanism reaching out for wide BSO networks.

Partners

• Business Upper Austria (lead partner)
• Friuli Innovazione Research and Technology Transfer Centre, Italy
• STEP RI Science and Technology Park of the University of Rijeka Ltd., Croatia
• Cluster Mechatronics & Automation, Germany
• MESAP Innovation Cluster, Italy
• Katowice Special Economic Zone SA, Poland
• Association of research organizations, Czech Republic
• University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria

Activities

• Developing a comprehensive I4.0-related capacity building methodology and implementation toolbox for BSOs to increase their competences for supporting digital transformation of CE SMEs.
• Demonstrating the newly developed Snowball Mechanism for sustainable downstreaming of the Boost4BSO capacity building programme from PP BSOs to further CE BSOs and transnational BSO networks.
• Pilotting the innovative Boost4BSO support service package with local SMEs involving PPs, APs and external BSOs and establish an awarding mechanism for BSOs to recognize the sustainable integration of Boost4BSO results in their SME support services.

Project duration 01.04.2020 - 31.03.2022