About us

The BSR Stars programme aims at strengthening competitiveness and economic growth in the Baltic Sea Region. This will be achieved by fostering transnational linkages between specialized research and innovation nodes, leading to strategic innovation alliances to tackle common “grand challenges”, such as health, energy, sustainable transports and digital business and services.

BSR Stars is a flagship within the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region and is a first-of-its-kind innovation programme.

The BSR Stars programme is a joint effort which has been developed over a period of one and a half years, involving approximately forty people from ten countries’ ministries and national innovation agencies.  The countries are: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland and Sweden.

The development of the BSR Stars programme builds on the networks and experiences that have evolved within the BSR InnoNet project and knowledge generated by leading researchers on innovation; and the most recent EU innovation policies and instruments.

The main target groups of the programme are innovation environments, clusters and SME-networks.  BSR Stars is a flagship programme within the priority area for innovation in the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region. This macro-regional strategy was adopted by the European Council in 2009. It is the first macro-regional strategy of the EU aiming on developing the region into a globally leading region. The priority area innovation is coordinated by the Nordic Council of Ministers, the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications. The first activities were carried out by the StarDust project with five subprojects supported by new tools and methods on open and user driven innovation.

From 2009 to 2011 the development of the BSR Stars programme was done by in kind investment, SIDA BSR programme and the Nordic Council of Ministers Mobility programme. Activities between 2011 – 2014 were funded through Interreg-BSR programme. The new BSR Stars, 2015-2017 are funded by in-kind contributions of staff from the Baltic States and cash contributions from Finland, Poland, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and Nordic Council of Ministers Secretariat.