SCALE UP 2022 brought together technology suppliers, manufacturing companies, clusters and organizations funding innovative technologies, coming from different parts of Europe. Participants had the opportunity to learn more about the planned national and European funding for innovation, programs for supporting internationalization and new market trends.
The event was organized by Cluster for Digital Transformation an Innovation together with ICT Cluster, DigiTech 4.0 and I4MS – EU initiative to digitalise the manufacturing industry, with the financial support of the European Commission within the projects: C2Future, BRIDGE, and EXCITE. The event was supported by Sofia Tech Park as a partner and local contact point of EEN.
During the 1st day, 71 were all facilitated B2B meetings between participants from 17 European countries. The matchmaking event was organised within C2Future project and supported by EXCITE ClusterXchange Partnership https://scale-up-2022-sofia.b2match.io/
The second day was dedicated to the digital transformation and funding opportunities for innovative projects, continued with the success stories of Bulgarian companies, which with the support of the ICT Cluster have received cascading funding for their innovative projects. June 9-th was dedicated to the opportunities for internationalization. The participants in the event had the opportunity to get familiar with the projects BRIDGE, C2Future and EXCITE.
The event ended with an active discussion about the challenges and opportunities for clusters to support small and medium sized companies. In the discussion took part of 15 clusters from 10 countries, representing 5 European Strategic Partnerships. The clusters united around the idea of continuing their cooperation, exchanging ideas and experiences in order to give better support and opportunities to their SMEs.
Video from the conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBGw47-qlrY