Introducing the all-new EMPHASIS project, a Euro-Mediterranean Network Facilitating Market Uptake of Innovations from SMEs launched last September. But what exactly does that mean? 

The EMPHASIS project is an initiative that aims to enhance the innovation capacity of SMEs from the partner countries by co-creating a Euro-Mediterranean Open Innovation ecosystem. Open Innovation is the use of purposeful inflows and outflows of knowledge to enhance internal innovation and increase opportunities for external use of invention. This implies that businesses should use both external and internal ideas, as well as internal and external channels to market, to progress their technology.

The project will build a joint multinational approach to solving sustainability challenges through the exploitation of innovations by transforming research results into marketable innovations, which is a type of innovation that builds on an organization's existing assets and enhances them using modest approaches with an emphasis on efficiency and improvement.

EMPHASIS aims leverage the outcomes of a series of projects to identify SMEs, assess their "readiness" to interact with OI, and offer them advisory services – in the form of vouchers – to improve their innovation capacity and build partnerships at various phases of their innovation journeys.

One such way is the EMPHASIS ICT Platform, which will provide a series of online tools based on an existing website developed during the NETKITE and I KNOW projects and the tools and models developed in INSPIRE project. The platform will facilitate idea generation and support the community to post their offers (inventions, patents and technologies), needs and look for partnerships. 

The project will provide an integrated support system for SMEs engaged in Open Innovation, leveraging existing Mediterranean networks to identify at least 60 innovation opportunities, from which 12 SMEs and start-ups with proposals that best meet the call criteria will be chosen to receive support in the form of vouchers to aid the development of cross-border Open Innovation Projects and you can be part of it!

This project brings together a group of six partners from six Mediterranean countries, including Greece, Jordan, Spain, Lebanon, Egypt, and Italy, each with a unique set of skills and a shared strong desire to collaborate across borders. Join us on our 24-month journey, follow us on social media, and stay tuned to learn more about the people behind the project and to keep up with everything EMPHASIS!