Austria is a partner of choice for Friuli Innovazione, which in 10 years has written over 15 million euro with its neighbors across the Alps, becoming the reference in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region of the Austrian support organizations entrepreneurship.

Present but above all future collaborations with Austrian organizations and companies was discussed during the institutional visit to Friuli Innovazione of the Honorary Consul of Austria in Friuli Venezia Giulia, Sabrina Strolego, and of Gregor Postl, Commercial Counselor of the Austrian Embassy in Italy.

Strolego and Postl have been confronted with the director Fabio Feruglio on ways to further intensify joint activities between Austria and Friuli Venezia Giulia in the field of innovation and research, encouraging in particular the exchange of ideas and best practices and the cooperation between startups and cross-border level. Friuli Innovazione is in fact the regional reference, as well as among the promoters, of the Memorandum signed in 2017 by various institutions of Veneto, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia for the creation of a hub for startups of the Alps Adria able to attract young and promising companies from other countries, including non-EU countries.

And it is precisely dedicated to startups one of the most significant projects that the business incubator of Friuli is carrying on cross-border: this is EEsAA - Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Alpe Adria, a project worth more than 1 million 200 thousand Euro realized within the Interreg Italy-Austria Program 2014-2020.
The EEsAA business ecosystem is aimed at connecting entrepreneurial hubs and local start-ups in a cross-border cluster, where technology parks, universities, incubators and co-working play a central role in the joint promotion of the Alpe Adria entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The E-EDU 4.0 project (funded by the Interreg Italy-Austria Program 2014-2020), in collaboration with the Carinthian University of Applied Sciences, which will start in May and aims to develop a network, focuses on Industry 4.0. cross-border qualification - still non-existent - for the specific skills required by advanced manufacturing.

"We hope that, thanks to the joint efforts of the institutions that each of us represents - said the Honorary Consul (and successful entrepreneur) Sabrina Strolego - from this first meeting can be born and consolidate synergies useful to share insights, progress and results in the fields of education for entrepreneurship, technology transfer, and the process of digitization of European industry ".

"The task of Friuli Innovazione is not only to stimulate innovation by transferring research results to the market - said the director Fabio Feruglio - but also to encourage and accelerate access to new potential markets and select the best opportunities to develop dynamic and virtuous collaborations.