Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Excellence Partnership BLUES organised a group exchange online training.

Nanoprogress, a nanotechnology cluster from Czech Republic, planned and hosted the virtual ClusterXchange with excellent trainers from the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. The training took place during a total of three working days between 26 May 2021 and 18 June 2021, and gathered a total of 28 Visiting Organisations from seven different countries (Czech Republic, France, Germany, Lithuania, Norway, Poland and Spain). The participants were comprised of experts from other clusters, SMEs, technology centers and research institutes.

All the available places were reserved within 2 days of the announcement of the training, which demonstrated the importance of the topics selected for the exchange programme.

The goals of the virtual exchange were to train the visiting organisations on how to develop robust business strategies for innovation, winning pitches, conduct joint market research, create relationships and opportunities for networking, contribute towards knowledge raising and business improvement. After the conclusion of the training, the following benefits were identified:  

• Improved employee performance
• Improved employee satisfaction and morale
• Increased productivity and adherence to quality standards
• Increased innovation in new strategies and products
• Enhanced reputation and profile of companies

The exchange boosted co-creation between participants, and each training session was further complemented by matchmaking sessions.

Discussing the exchange, Katherina Ulrich from BalticNet-PlasmaTec said “Thank you so much to Nanoprogress for organising such a great online training about business strategies for innovation and winning pitches. I had already joined a lot of trainings but these have been the best I have ever participated in”.