Europe INNOVA - Partnerships for better innovation support

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Industrial clusters in Europe are the drivers of innovation. Innovation itself is driven by close collaboration between industry, intermediaries and policy makers in the leading European regional hubs.

Space technologies have received a renaissance with the advent of Galileo, Europe's own global navigation satellite system (GNSS) planned to be operable in 2010/11. To prepare Europe to win a fair share of the markets related to Galileo applications and services a major effort is needed that goes beyond single regional cluster activities. Various initiatives seeking to develop and integrate GNSS applications have already started across Europe; these should be coordinated to enable plans for further strategic marketing.

On the 25th of October 2006, Munich hosted the 2nd Europe INNOVA Thematic Workshop under the title "Supporting commercial exploitation of space derived technologies and applications through market pull activities: how to pass the needs of customers and consumers to developers to launch new market opportunities". The event took place during SYSTEMS 2006, the leading B2B Trade Fair for IT, Media and Communications, in the New Munich Trade Fair Centre (Neue Messe Mu"nchen). The workshop gathered nearly 45 stakeholders from over 30 organisations across Europe with optimum success. Most of the participants signed a Memorandum of Understanding establishing:

An informal European Platform to support the creation of a market strategy in the field of space and Galileo derived applications.

The ENCADRE network numbers 16 clusters in the field of satellite and space technologies based applications. The network started a number of actions to raise awareness among companies, entrepreneurs and users on the opportunities offered by existing space and satellite technologies, e.g. GPS II, Galileo/EGNOS, to develop hundreds of new applications in a wide array of existing and new markets. The network will in the next months launch a new website with the principal aim of offering transparency of cluster/incubator activities.

Further to the MoU, the Mission Statement, the Work Plan and the Road Map, the "EUROPEAN NETWORK OF SATNAV/SPACE CLUSTERS FOR APPLICATIONS DEVELOPMENT- ENCADRE decided to adopt another documents namely the coordination agreement.