EU Project Cosme BLUES

Blue and Eco industries cluster exchange for induStrial modernisation (BLUES) overall objective is to strengthen cluster excellence management and facilitate a European Strategic Cluster Partnership for Excellence between water clusters and KET clusters (plasma, nanotechnology, and ICT) to enhance the SME competitiveness and increase their international opportunities in the single market and beyond, by means of benchmarking, long-life learning, best practices transfer, and exchanges.

BLUES is formed by five mature clusters representing new emerging industries in Europe that have water sustainability and resource efficiency as a common thread. BLUES partners are committed to excellence (currently ESCA lable bronze, silver and gold) formed by 464 entities (SME and Scaling-up support organisations).

BLUES partners initiated a cooperation agenda in the framework of the Cluster Excellence Programme that comes to the next stage in 2020 to further the clusters’ partnership. Thus, BLUES will boost the promotion of cluster management excellence towards the improvement of a comprehensive strategy and added-value SME support services. A nuclear part of the proposal will be the implementation of the ClusterXchange pilot scheme by organising 50 exchanges between Cluster SME, scaling-up support organisations, and clusters within the blue and eco-industries areas. Accordingly, the project work plan is based on five work packages for skills enhancement and strategy building (WP1), organisation of joint activities (WP2), the implementation of ClusterXchange pilot scheme (WP3), the project outreach and awareness-raising (WP4) and project management (WP5).

Overall the project represents a powerful tool in the implementation of the European Industrial policy strategy, which results will be reinforced by the partners’ involvement within the S3 platform. Moreover, the long-term sustainability beyond BLUES will be secured by enlarging the European Economic Interest Group lead by some of the project partners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugiCe-fHK3k

 

Project Partner

BalticNet-PlasmaTec – Coordinator and WP 5 leader
Nanoprogress – WP1 leader
MCICT – WP 2 leader
ZINNAE – WP 3 leader
Aqua Valley – WP 4 leader

BLUES Work Packages

WP 1 – Skills enhancement and strategy building for smart and sustainable ESCP-4x ecosystem and beyond
WP 2 – Organisation and implementation of joint activities
WP 3 – Implementation of “ClusterXchange” pilot scheme for blue and eco industries
WP 4 – Outreach and awareness-raising activities
WP 5 – Project Management

Objectives

Objective 1
Provide needed knowledge and skills for improving the cluster management, extending the offer of high value-added services toward relevant stakeholders, implementing best practices into cluster daily businesses, creating smart and sustainable individual strategies, achieving the desired labels of excellence and create a smart and sustainable strategy of the newly born ESCP-4x ecosystem.

Objective 2
Empower cross-regional cooperation, improve relationships between partnership clusters, foster open innovation cooperation to generate benefit and promote growth and specialization strategies.

Objective 3
To facilitate transnational, sectoral and cross-sectoral exchanges between Clusters and their members (SME, technology centres and other scaling-up support organisations from COSME participant countries) within the blue and eco-industries domain, to facilitate learning, innovation -orientated activities, and the discovery of European markets and business partners in the Single Market and beyond in order to increase their competitiveness and growth.

Objective 4
To build internal and external BLUES project communication, to disseminate good practices, to valorise and promote the BLUES project results, to engage clusters, SME and research centres in the ClusterXchange pilot and to enhance the members’ visibility.

Objective 5
To coordinate the BLUES project management, to efficiently handle and manage the Commitment to Quality (CtQ), to develop BLUESXchange contracts and financial agreements, to evaluate the BLUESXchange.

BLUES Road to Excellence

BLUES project was funded by the European Union’s COSME Programme, grant N°874426

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