The DIH-World innovation project was launched on July 10th with the goal of accelerating the development and consolidation of Digital Innovation Hubs and to improve the digitization of European SMEs. The project will last for three years, it has a budget of 8 million euros and 41 partners in 26 countries. The DIH-World project will support European SMEs in the development of sustainable competitive advantages and in the reach of global markets.
DIH-World will empower Digital Innovation Hubs, one of the engines of the SMEs digital transformation, providing access to harmonized tools, proven technologies, effective methodologies, solid knowledge, smart investment sources, rich training assets and an environment of continuous innovation.
During these three years, the DIH-World project aims to accelerate the maturity of the Digital Innovation Hubs so as the development of their collaboration capabilities by capitalizing and taking advantage of the European networks in benefit of their local SMEs. DIH-World will support then the Digital Innovation Hubs by providing services to manufacturing ecosystems focusing on the most traditional and least digitized SMEs and Startups aiming to increase their competitiveness and sustainability through the use of digital technologies. The DIH-World Academy will provide the tools to train Digital Innovation Hubs so they can take SMEs to the next level through open calls for experiments, which will offer technological support to SMEs and medium-sized companies.
The DIH-World network includes 27 Digital Innovation Hubs and those will grow to a minimum of 72 with the launch of two open calls, one in 2021 and the other one in 2022. DIH-World will be especially focused on those countries and regions with a lower level of digitization to establish a strong support system for digital transformation across Europe, also ensuring that all regions can take advantage of the opportunities offered by digital technologies.
CARSA‘s role will be to support the development of the DIH-World network by defining, preparing and launching open calls for experiments. Two open calls will be launched during the lifetime of the project and after the closing of each one, the proposals will be evaluated and selected by the consortium internal experts. CARSA will also be responsible for the coordination and management of the project guaranteeing the achievement of its goals.
On the other hand, CBT will be the company in charge of developing a communication plan, the visual identity of the project and establishing the collaboration platform while disseminating about the project, which is key since the project aims to reach SMEs in all Europe.
Finally, the Innovalia Association has the mission of directing the pilot experiments by support the digital transformation of manufacturing SMEs in its area. The pilots will also serve to assess the added value of experimentation. As a result of the pilot experiments the best practices will be disseminated in order to help other Digital Innovation Hubs and SMEs to work with similar sectors or technologies.