RUMORE

RUMORE’s overall goal is to improve regional innovation policies by facilitating rural-urban collaboration and partnerships. Owing to the fact that urban cores are often more innovative and surrounding rural parts are not well linked in terms of innovation chains, there is a gap for joint innovation policy and effects for regional development. Clusters and regional innovation strategies are frequently overly focused on cities, ignoring stakeholders (e.g. R+D institutions, innovative enterprises) in rural and peripheral areas, who are unable to reach their full potential. RUMORE addresses this flaw in many policies and improves innovation delivery in regional innovation chains, through improved rural-urban partnerships.

A mix of regional authorities, one advisory Lead Partner, and a business development agency make up the eight partners of the partnership coming from five countries. RUMORE brings together a few approaches to designing and implementing policy instruments for integrated urban-rural development in innovation policies. Learning Events designed as living labs will be used to share good practices between partners in an interregional learning and peer review process, and then transferred and adapted to the specific contexts. The progress of improving each policy instrument is continuously discussed, and three overarching working groups produce results and added value.

With a total amount of around 7,5 million Euros, four ERDF-ROPs and two other policy instruments will be improved. More than 300 activities supported between innovation actors, as well as a significantly increased share of innovative companies located in the partner regions, are among the expected and anticipated outcomes. The LP disseminates recommendations to existing networks, in order to capture interregional learning and leverage it for other European stakeholders.

As a project partner, CERTH will participate in two aspects of the pilot: a) providing the ICT infrastructure and blockchain know-how to develop and implement a DIH for rice producers and b) recording and monitoring the entire rice value chain by using and digitizing biodata from critical points in the value chain.

Consortium

HafenCity University Hamburg, Germany
Lombardy Region, Italy
Green Knowledge Portal Twente, Netherland
City of Amsterdam, Netherland
Regional Development Fund of Central Macedonia on behalf of the Region of Central Macedonia, Greece
ORGANIZATION FOR LOCAL DEVELOPMENT, ANATOLIKI SA, Greece
Office for Regional Development Lüneburg, Germany
District Government Burgas, Bulgaria
Hellenic Agricultural Organization DEMETER, Greece
Centre for Research and Technology Hellas – CERTH, Greece