During the morning of 20/07/22, representatives of the ENI CBC Med  projects INTECMED led by the Association of the Mediterranean Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASCAME)  and NEX-LABS led by Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) gathered together with the PHEMAC project funded by the PRIMA programme together with representatives of the Managing Authority of PRIMA. 

The main aim of the meeting was to assess the best ways to establish clear future synergies to capitalize on platforms to better connect excellent research results, innovation opportunities and private sector investors with demands facing the challenges the society face on a daily basis in the water, energy and food sectors. 

Today, there are different platforms provided, among them, some like INTECMED's eBazaar of Innovation which helps bringing together regional key actors, such as universities, research centers, chambers of commerce and investors to access to particular information regarding , food, energy and health sectors, such as match making of funding opportunities  and training, or PHEMAC's iHub conceived as a dissemination, marketplace, job bank and on-line mapping tool to stimulate visibility and reuse of project results in water, energy and food sectors funded by various agencies.

However, the representatives agreed that there is still a lack of greater user participation in the use of this type of platforms to increase the visibility of existing solutions, or of the needs put forward by the private sector or society to face the challenges that climate change is revealing in the Mediterranean region.

The communities of actors around the 3 projects mentioned above, become a critical mass of actors that manage to represent a community of practice and experience in solutions for the water, food and energy sectors, replicating the Penta helix model of cooperation.

These communities are currently contributing to the development and consolidation of new business ideas, based on research results, through various actions (coaching, training, mentoring, scouting, R2B2R missions, vouchers under NEX-LABS, go2market, hackathon and innovation weeks through PHEMAC or mentorship programmes, new products and services, creation of spin offs delivered by INTECMED). In short, tools and support activities to replicate in the Mediterranean region, promising solutions to face the risks derived from climate change. 

The meeting has allowed to reflect the existence of clear opportunities for cooperation and to establish synergies and bidirectional flows of information, cooperation, supply of demands and solutions between projects, in order to consolidate the effective implementation of these promising solutions. 

As a result, PHEMAC and INTECMED intend to work closely together during the forthcoming months to address new potential features of the iHub and the eBazaar of Innovation platform linked to the private sector entities registration allowing the suitable matching between demands of innovative solutions, services or technologies and those available and mature project outputs ready for valorization. NEX-LABS will benefit and capitalize the results of the two platform through its Agora. 

The representatives of the projects have agreed to continue to establish regular meetings to further consolidate the synergies detected, increase the critical mass of actors that can continue to cooperate, and actively participate in those events that one or the other organizes in the future.