23 Dec2015
27 Jul2015
NEXT Newsletter #5

23 Jul2015
The main outputs from the 6th project Steering Committee
The 6th and final NEXT Project Steering Committee meeting, held in Ancona on 9th of July 2015, had traced the main lines for the future of a common system for sharing open data in the matter of innovation, start-ups and European project for applied researches and prototyping. Partners have discussed about problems, solutions and opportunities represented by NEXT-IS platform. It was important for the partnership to understand which are the area and items of improvement of a project that is going to contribute in a relevant way to the coming transnational cooperation programme in the Adriatic-Ionian European territorial cooperation area. The “Research, innovation and SMEs development” is the cross-cutting area of Strategy of Adriatic-Ionian Macro-region and of course of the new ETC Programme “Adrion” which is the main European programme of this area with its 99,2 millions of Euro (83,5 mln. of ERDF plus 15,7 mln. of IPA). Moreover, ETC Adrion Programme with the scope to reach its thematic objective 1, within the priority axe 1 it represent the main opportunity for specific project addressed to innovation and smart development. Surely, NEXT is the ancestor of these future projects with its heritage and potentiality to develop the “open data” exchange system moving towards the Adriatic-Ionian Cloud common system. The partner PfD from Tirana had illustrated the business plan called “NEXT SUITE” in order to find an agreement regarding the modality to maintain NEXT-IS platform in function after the project closure. “Database infrastructure: 70% was set as benchmark for services. It’s been tried to see the platform in the logic of business” says the FfD representative “ but in order to increase the chance of businesses. Following to this the focus on quality should be done. All the partnership has to make sure that there is the site for uploading the documents” continues the FfD representative “willingness to contribute test: provide short information on … and explain who is doing what. Business model needs further testing and market validation”. City of Sibenik representatives had replied by presenting the current situation in relation to the NEXT IS platform maintance and explains that the municipality is quite small and it is not the core activity. Therefore they offered that the platform from the technical point of view could be taken over by Marche Region. This idea was very appreciated by the whole partnership. Therefore, Marche Region will host the platform without any additional costs for the partners and make it stay open for additional 4-5 years. A new Partnership Agreement will rule the maintance of NEX-IS platform among partners and a plan of development of own database, in order to federate it to NEXT-IS platform will be the technical annex to the agreement. These means also that partners will promote towards their local stakeholder to continue to use and populate NEXT-IS platform and post news to NEXT-Blog. Open innovation is going to became a reality through NEXT-IS platform and Marche Cloud. Finally, another result of the meeting was the possibility to have for the coming three years, the project website on-line. The partner IDA explains that the website and its important public repository of main outputs produced during the project implementation by the partnership will be maintained for next 3 years. In this way, it is possible to continue to publish and download documents from the public repository and use them for new project proposals. Francesco Cuddemi, TA team
03 Jul2015
NEXT conference Agenda
Here you’ll find the Next Conference Agenda in Ancona, on July 10. Officers of the new regional Administration, foreigner guests from partners Countries will discuss on the prosecution of the partnership. You can follow us on NextIS platform and on Marche Innovazione platform in the next months. Upload the agenda:Conference_Agenda_10-07_Final
29 Jun2015
Open Innovation in Lombardy
500 users have subsctribed the Open Innovation platform promoted by Regione Lombardia. The goal was favoured by an initiative of the Region: a call was launched for Sme’s and RTTC’s about the start of communities focused on regional RIS 3. The call is opened till july 20.
11 Jun2015
OECD: brain circulation

01 Jun2015
Lessons from pitching
In the recent pitch event in Ancona, Paolo Anselmo, IBAN president (Italian Business Angel Network Association), made a presentation very useful for understanding the start up financing business. Here you can read the presentation (.pdf): Pres_Anselmo Some remarks are particularly inspiring: Banks perceive SME as a riskier biz; there is a great distance between the attitudes of businesses and the methodology used by financial bodies; in Europe (and in specific South Europe) capial market ids fragmented and immature; there is an under evaluation by start uppers as regard as the exit strategy of their business idea. The final part of the presentation is useful to understand the different biz-models of equity providers, VC and Business Angels.
11 May2015
Tirana: ANCE appears on the Albanian market

29 Apr2015
NEXT envive for the future – Opportunity

- In the coming years the Italian regions, Croatia and Slovenia, will publish calls for financing initiatives to develop areas of specialization chosen by their Smart SpecializationStrategy (S 3)
- At the same time the EU through Horizon 2020 will play a similar role.
- In Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Albania governments will proceed to strengthen themselves excellence with targeted funding.
This means that in the next 6-7 years, it’s opening a space of opportunities to seize on innovation. In the Adriatic Ionian Macro Region will be therefore to materialize projects and initiatives to address the needs of common development.
23 Apr2015
NEXT Newsletter #4
