The StarDust project brings academic, business and public world together to find better solutions for the Baltic Sea Region. The overall objective is it to find new answers for societal challenges that the people around the Baltic Sea are facing. Increasing water pollution and an ageing population are just two examples of those.
StarDust turns these challenges into opportunities for growth. Five projects addressing big societal challenges have been developed within StarDust. Their mission is to find new and innovative solutions to meet these challenges.
Their cooperation highlights that common problems must be addressed jointly. Therefore, every project combines researchers, clusters, SME-networks and public actors from different countries around the Baltic Sea. The projects bring different expertise and perspectives together. This transnational cooperation gives the creative approach that is needed to meet the grand challenges.
The five transnational projects are the core of StarDust. They operate in the fields of clean technology & future energy, wellbeing & health, future transport, and digital business & services. New commercial-based concepts and routines relating transnational, national, regional and local levels will be indentified and implemented. The projects involve all fields of innovations (scientific, technical as well as non-technical) with the aim of developing business-focused competitive global positions in selected fields. In this way, the project increases the growth of the region by fostering business ideas and setting up competitive partnerships beyond the national borders.
In total, StarDust mobilizes 34 partners from the public and semi-public sector. These partners are supported by 33 associated partners from national, regional and local levels. This set of partners represents all national ministries and innovation agencies in the ten Baltic Sea countries. The five pilots are supported by five work packages, for example regarding their communication or collaboration.
The innovation project StarDust is a transnational project co-financed by the European Union's Baltic Sea Region Programme 2007-2013, which promotes regional development through transnational cooperation. StarDust was enacted under the priority area 1 aiming on fostering innovation with a total budget of 6,5 million Euros. StarDust builds on earlier cooperation and is in line with the earlier transnational projects (like BSR InnoNet and BSR_CBP projects).
StarDust is a part of the BSR Stars programme and it is viewed as the next milestone towards its full implementation. The BSR Stars programme represents the first flagship within Chapter 7 in the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region. This so-called macro strategy was decided by the European Council in 2009. It is the first macro strategy of the EU aiming on developing the region into a globally leading region. The priority area 7 is coordinated by the polish Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications and the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems, VINNOVA. VINNOVA also leads the project StarDust.
The five pilots are:
