Project Roadmap

Silver Economy Market Studies are studies based on interviews with representatives of end-users or senior people and companies offering products and services for senior people. Silver Economy market studies shed light on product and services gaps, regional or local barriers and opportunities, market dimensions, customer segmentation, capabilities and skills, price sensitivity, end-user and business environment needs, competitive advantages and market evolution forecasts.

Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP) is an interactive bottom-up process in which participants from different environments work together to explore ideas for potential new activities, identifying potential opportunities that emerge through their interaction. A series of workshops implementing EDP methodology will identify the assets, capabilities and competences of Silver Economy actors in project regions. The report based on the workshops’ results will also point out the knowledge-intensive areas for potential growth, in close correlation with smart specialization priorities selected to be tackled in each project region and country.

Peer Exchange and Learning (PXL) is a methodology for reviewing specific elements of innovation strategies for smart specialization and territorial development strategies as well as tackling the associated implementation challenges. At PXL workshops, project partners review smart specialization strategies and their implementation level in their regions and will evaluate them by comparing them to the focus points of strategies and implementation level of another smart specialization region. The workshop report will guide the project regions and countries in the process of adjusting, revising and implementing smart specialization strategies.

Transnational Peer Review Mechanism is a method of systematic examination and assessment of the performance of a region by other regions, with the goal of helping the reviewed region improve its policy making, adopt best practices and comply with established standards and principles. At our seminars, innovation actors will analyse and debate the following issues related to the Silver Economy and selected smart specialization priorities in project regions and countries: 1) Funding schemes and financing mechanisms for supporting innovation and smart specialization projects; 2) Models and platforms for joint knowledge management and knowledge transfer; 3) Pilot programmes for supporting innovation and smart specialization projects.

The Regional Knowledge Maps are tools for effectively visualizing the sources, flows, constraints and terminations of tacit and explicit knowledge. Knowledge maps are an interactive and open system for dialogue that defines, organizes and builds on the intuitive, structured and procedural knowledge used to explore and solve problems. The validated toolkit will be used to discover regional knowledge important in innovation.

The Knowledge Management Model will be used in the development of the innovation network. The Model will define working processes and practices oriented at the creation, acquisition, capture, sharing and use of knowledge, skills and expertise to be followed by innovation actors located in the project regions. It will be the main instrument for handling the connection between smart specialization approach, industry and knowledge assets. This Model will synthesize and integrate knowledge at the regional level for creating a common process for exploiting Silver Economy growth opportunities and will be a useful instrument for managing a complete evolution cycle of the innovation process.

The Open Innovation Toolkit will contain knowledge maps, processes, studies and contacts to help product development for businesses. The kit will support each region to grow a stronger innovation ecosystem by connecting them to transnational networks and to innovation systems. This toolkit provides guidance for the whole process: from setting a strategy for collaboration to implementing business or policy models. It shows participants how to co-create or crowd-source relevant ideas, prototype the best ones and construct strong partnerships. The Open Innovation Toolkit helps organizations and regions to involve research, business, public sector and end-users in developing news ideas. The Open Innovation Toolkit will comply with open-access principles and will be published on the project website.

The Smart Silver Framework represents a pilot cooperation model for increasing innovation actors’ capacity to generate economic growth by using smart specialization approach. The Smart Silver Framework will be built through transnational cooperation, and its main purpose will be to become a viable model for strengthening regional and interregional innovation ecosystems. Its main qualities will be easy scalability and transferability. Valorisation of previous results will be realized through the integration of the Knowledge Management Model and Open Innovation Toolkit. The Smart Silver Framework will be freely available on the project website.

The Smart Silver Lab is an innovative multi-level governance structure for piloting smart silver framework regionally. The Smart Silver Lab will be a regional cluster structure networked at transnational level that will coordinate implementation and exploitation of project outputs to increase innovation capacity for enhancing silver economy opportunities in project regions. It will be able to diversify and/or identify new development trajectories, which each region may need to acquire in order to access new forms of knowledge, create new recombination of their resources, and move from path extension to new path-creation.

The Transnational Innovation Program is a tool for applying the entrepreneurial discovery process to generate smart specialization and business innovation. Project partners will select at least 30 innovation projects for the pilot program. It will be open to all organizations located in the OSIRIS project regions. All information and documents regarding the Transnational Innovation Program will comply with open-access principles and will be freely available on the project website.

The business Accelerator Program has the purpose of speeding up go-to-market process for 30 business innovation projects. Its scope is to implement specific processes and services in order to support innovation projects owners to develop a market viable product (MVP). The OSIRIS Accelerator Program is unique because it is structured based on the joint involvement of research organizations and businesses for mentoring, coaching, testing and validation of their products. Our target is for at least 10 innovation projects to achieve a Market Viable product status and therefore enter in the investment readiness program.

The Silver Financing Mechanism is a tool to bridge the gap between the financing needs of innovation actors and the investment market, to speed up market commercialization of innovative products and services. The Mechanism will facilitate access to finance for the organizations implementing innovation and smart specialization projects that exploit Silver Economy opportunities. It will be an aggregator that will network and gather different funding instruments and investment organizations as representatives of the supply side with companies or organizations that need funding in order to enter the markets with their product. Also, the mechanism will run actions for preparing the demand side to pitch with investors and secure funding.

The Silver Financing Program will be a document containing financial processes and solutions to help new innovations in the Silver Economy. The Silver Financing Program aims to pilot how the financing mechanism works for the innovation projects that achieved a minimum viable product and finished Accelerator Program. Its purpose is to support innovation project owners in securing funding for the commercialization phase. The Silver Financing Program is a project output that will comply with open-access principles, meaning that the general public will have access to it. The output will be freely available on the project website.

The Digital Silver Hub will be a virtual working environment for the Smart Silver Framework, integrating networked Smart Silver Labs operations, transnational accelerator functionalities and financial mechanism functionalities to facilitate the commercialization of innovative products or services developed using the Smart Silver Framework. The main features of this platform will be: profiles for R&D organizations, companies, local and national authorities, smart specialization authorities, and end-users. It will have a forum, searching & matching of partners and solutions as well as networking solutions to help the open innovation ecosystem.

The main result of OSIRIS will be the Baltic Sea Joint Action Plan, a joint strategic document that establishes the measures that must be jointly implemented by project regions to use existing assets for capitalizing silver economy opportunities and join the global value chain. It will evidence complementary assets and linkages between project regions and will indicate the areas where there are opportunities to capitalize on complementarities in other locations as well as developing inter-/macro-regional and trans-European linkages.