About BSR Stars
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 BSR Stars programme aims at linking strong research environments, clusters and SME networks – creating a number of globally-leading innovation partnerships that address common societal challenges in the Baltic Sea Region. The programme also aims at strengthening innovation policy capabilities to work with smart specialisation on a macro-regional level.
To reach this goal, the StarDust project was ongoing from 2010 to 2013 as a first step towards realising the overall long-term goals of BSR Stars and testing the strategic policy frames. Through this project, we have managed to test this challenge-driven, macro-regional smart specialisation approach – delivering on ambitious targeted results and proving the potential of such an approach. We have shown the value of a common policy framework – the BSR Stars programme – which has acted as a bridge-builder and catalyser for innovation activities between actors from neighbouring countries. StarDust has focused on testing collaborative methods and policy support to a set of five transnational innovation partnerships.
The BSR Stars programme hosts currently the following transnational partnerships:
Joint programming in cooperation with BSR Stars:
Vision
The long-term vision of BSR Stars is to establish the Baltic Sea Region as a functional region with an internationally competitive position in a number of strategically prioritized areas. The overall objective of the BSR Stars programme is to achieve this integrated resource base by linking strong research environments, clusters and SME-networks – creating a number of globally-leading research and innovation hubs in the BSR in order to achieve stronger critical mass, attractiveness, and a competitive international position.
These hubs will be skilled in identifying market potentials in “grand challenges”, mobilizing competencies that may be dispersed over different sectors and geographies, and providing open platforms from which various actors can work together to creative innovative solutions that tackle these challenges. Activities will also foster job and SME growth opportunities, and strengthen social and territorial cohesion for the Baltic Sea Region.
Mission
The ambition of the BSR Stars is to stimulate the Baltic Sea Region to become a functional region where it is natural for actors to collaborate with other actors in the region and consider this to be a home market, and at the same time keep linkages to the rest of the world.
The EU Strategy for the BSR gives the BSR Stars programme a policy framework to work within and provides the justification for decentralized and regional innovation policy that introduces new methodologies and approaches/tools.
The BSR Stars programme’s main focus is to activate collaboration between the macro region’s resource base by strengthening linkages between research environments, clusters and SME-networks to foster sustainable growth and prosperity.
The mission of the programme is to shape a more integrated resource base and expanded markets as well as build dynamic innovation capabilities that can be leveraged to address common challenges (in areas such as health, energy, sustainable transports, and digital business and services). The ambition is to stimulate the different locations to become globally leading innovation hubs in a number of different areas. The programme participants will be trained in identifying market potentials in “grand challenges” and in mobilizing competencies that may be dispersed over different sectors and countries. Participants will further work on open innovation platforms where various actors can work together to creative innovative solutions that tackle these challenges. Activities will also foster job and SME growth opportunities, and strengthen social and territorial cohesion for the Baltic Sea Region.
The specific goals of BSR Stars are to:
- Develop competencies and capabilities in working with open and demand-driven innovation methods.
- Form new strategic alliances and innovation partnerships, which lead to:
- Commercialized applications, products & services
- New firms and jobs
- Increased export activities (both between countries within the BSR and outside of the BSR
- Strengthen the BSR’s international visibility and attractiveness.