Agri Sud Ouest Innovation
Overview
Agri Sud-Ouest Innovation is a French "pôle de compétitivité" dedicated to innovation in the agri-food sector in southwestern France. ASOI has a staff made of 17 people and gathers some 400 members, mostly SMEs and mid-caps, laboratories, research centres and institutions.
The Strategic Research Agenda of ASOI relies on three main priorities:
- Develop agro-refineries and enhance overall agricultural production, such as bioplastics,
- Improve production system efficiency, for example in agricultural machinery or precision farming through digital solutions
- Optimise eco-efficiency production inputs, for example with biocontrol products or biostimulants
Agri Sud-Ouest Innovation spreads on the large perimeter of the south-west part of France (Regions Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie), where the diversity of farm productions is important, regarding both vegetal and animal productions. Concerning crops, the cluster unite excellence competences from public and private research centers on vine and wine, fruit and vegetables, sunflower, corn and soy, including the European leader seeds companies and some rising SMEs in the ICT, biotechnologies and biocontrol sectors.
The core activities of ASOI rely on:
- the emergence of innovative ideas through the regular organization of creative events (innovation clubs, creativity sessions, hackathons) and thematic workshops or seminars (~ 20 events organized every year),
- the construction of innovative project with companies. ASOI provides an overview of funding possibilities at regional, national or European level, boost consortium dynamics, provide project engineering expertise and gives a label to projects fulfilling excellence criteria based on innovation aspects and economic and social spill-overs (~50 collaborative projects awarded every year)
-the support to companies to bring the innovation to the market: expertise in IP, business models, strategic intelligence, prospective missions on international markets (~100 SMEs supported every year).
Agri Sud-Ouest Innovation is a GOLD-labelled cluster (Cluster Management Excellence Label) since 2012. Digital technologies.