Reshaping business strategies and supporting innovation across the Alpine region

Mature small companies often find it hard to open new development paths. Alpine business support organisations can guide them to seize relaunch opportunities if they are able to provide efficient, complete services and to network effectively across the Alpine region. BE-READI ALPS trains their personnel to assist companies in spotting innovation opportunities, defining a strategy, adopting the needed digital tools, finding suitable partners across the Alps and accessing new funding options like crowdfunding. Project partners will help at least 50 companies reshape their value chains to increase competitiveness and reach new promising markets. Click below and watch some project videos, highlighting the main achievements of BE-READI ALPS.

Encouraging sustainable mobility behaviours in the Alpine region

In the Alps, people often move by private car while ignoring more sustainable means of transport. SaMBa explores new ways of leveraging rewards and pricing to trigger change in mobility behaviour. Project partners develop and test nine innovative campaigns to increase the use of low-carbon options like car-sharing, car-pooling, biking, hitchhiking and public transport. The lessons learned through these experiences are then made available to all Alpine policymakers committed to developing effective behaviour change policies. Click below and read a scientific article featuring SaMBA project learning and best practices, published by the SaMBA project partner University of Ljubljana.

Transforming industrial Alpine landspaces

In the Alps, like elsewhere, the decline of the traditional heavy and manufacturing industry has left behind impressive once-productive landscapes. These abandoned complexes can be revived and devoted to new purposes, with a transformation strategy geared to the natural, social and economic challenges each area faces. trAILS works with the local communities of 4 pilot sites to give a new life to former industrial areas and devises tools for salvaging this heritage across the Alps: a webGIS map, an assessment tool, co-design procedures and learning modules. Click below and discover the trAILs' project handbook, which provides a great overview on four project pilots in Austria, Italy, France and Slovenia.

Lowering barriers for cross-regional cooperation

The Alps are home to several innovation hot spots, but cross-sector and cross-region cooperation is still limited. As this becomes a key to creating new value chains and tapping into economic trends like circular-bioeconomy and health economy, ARDIA-NET partners have committed to create an Alpine research and development area, whose cross-regional funding framework will stimulate cooperation. In addition, partners carry out demonstrator projects to give prominence to the advantages of cross-border smart specialisation strategies. Get to know more about ARDIA-NET and watch the project video by clicking below.