Promoting Innovation in the regions

The AER Breakfast briefing took place on 22nd April 2009 at 9.00 am at Comunidad Valenciana representation office and focused on innovative projects and how they can be implemented in the regions.

In the framework of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, this Breakfast Briefing focused on the implementation of innovative solutions within the regions and the valuable benefits of innovation for them.

With increasing global economic challenges and uncertainty, Europe’s regions must become more inventive, react quicker and address global and environmental challenges by innovating more. AER is dedicated to promote innovation in the regions, especially through its Innovation Award, first launched in 2006.

The Prize aims at honouring European Regional Authorities' actions, which have stimulated, fostered and implemented innovation in their territory. It aims at promoting best practices as well as to demonstrate how regions can contribute to regional economic welfare. The 4th edition of the competition has just been launched. For further information, see here.

Comunidad Valenciana received the 2007 Innovation award in recognition of its programme called RUISNET, Regional University-Industry Strategies Network . This programme aimed to develop the tools necessary to detect, analyse, and extract the knowledge for the development of regions from the different good practices of cooperation between university and industry overseen throughout Europe. . Our guest speaker, Juan Manuel Revuelta Pérez, General Director of Comunidad Valenciana representation office, told us about how they successfully implemented this innovative project and what were the benefits for the region and its people.