BRIDGE (Bridging Research and Industry Developing Growth and Entrepreneurship) is a Capacity Building Action financed by the ACP programme to create a long term sustainable approach to innovation and entrepreneurship support in Dominican Republic and Haiti. BRIDGE, capitalizes on a need oriented approach to develop stable connections between Academia and Industry and set up an favourable institutional environment.
The main challenges addressed by BRIDGE are connected to:
- The need of upgrading support services to facilitate the dialogue between Research and Industry, translate company needs into technology and knowledge requests and Research and Development results into marketable solutions;
- The understanding of opportunities stemming out from mutual recognition of needs in terms of technology requests and Research and Development results exploitation;
- The knowledge on innovation support mechanisms based on a needs/market-pull approach rather a technology-push one;
- The access to operational details of good practices, crucial for an effective adoption.
Main activities by META Group include:
- Assessment of the territory R&D/economic potentials and profiling of regional relevant actors;
- Analysis of R&D supply and demand, assessment of knowledge inputs/output and technology check-ups on selected companies;
- Final regional SWOT analysis;
- Identification, analysis and selection of good practices at international level;
- Best practice adoption and study tours;
- Preparation of feasibility studies detailing for each support mechanism;
- Preparation of operational guidelines for implementation;
- Awareness raising actions and press campaign to ensure the needed level of stakeholder engagement;
- Competence building and consensus building workshops.