Energy Valley is a Digital Innovation Hub
Energy Valley was in October 2019 registered as a fully operational Digital Innovation Hub in EU’s Smart Specialisation Platform. Through the Energy Valley Digital Innovation Hub we are working to increase the digital maturity of the region’s SMEs to enable them to take advantage of new digital platforms and integrate them into their daily business. Our aim is to help our members to adapt to, benefit from, and contribute to an energy industry in transition.
Digital Innovation Hubs in EU
The European Commission is acting to trigger further investments in the digitisation of industry and support the creation of better framework conditions for the digital industrial revolution. One of the more important pillars of the Digitise European Industry effort is the activity to develop a network of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH).
Digital Innovation Hubs can help ensure that every company, small or large, high-tech or not, can grasp the digital opportunities. With universities, research organisations or industry organisations at the core, DIHs act as one-stop-shops where companies —especially SMEs, startups and mid-caps— can get access to technology-testing, financing advice, market intelligence and networking opportunities. The EU supports the collaboration of DIHs to create an EU-wide network, where companies can access competences and facilities not available in the DIH of their region. This network will lead to knowledge transfer between regions and will be the basis for economies of scale and investments in the hubs.
The Energy Valley Digital Innovation Hub
The Energy Valley DIH is an initiative to accelerate the digital energy transformation and foster unique cross-industry collaborations to create value and advance innovative technologies in energy and beyond. A strategic focus area of this initiative is the digital transformation of the industry in general and the SMEs in the Energy Valley cluster in particular. This is highlighted in our flagship project “SME Digital Transformation”, which is chaired by Morten Dalsmo, EVP Sintef Digital & Chair of Norway’s Digital21 program.
In the Energy Valley DIH we collaborate with our partners like SINTEF Digital, UiO:Energy and large industry players to offer a digital infrastructure, knowledge transfer and new insight to all the members of Energy Valley. Our aim is to help our members to adapt to, benefit from, and contribute to an energy industry in transition.
Through the Energy Valley DIH we are working to increase the digital maturity of the region’s SMEs to enable them to take advantage of new digital platforms and integrate them into their daily business. We believe the SME perspective will accelerate the development of these platforms and increase value creation across the entire value chain in the energy market.
DIH funding opportunities
As part of the European network of DIHs we are also invited to participate in specific projects and open calls for project funding. A first example of this is the DIH² initiative aiming at accelerating production through robotics. They are organising an open call where they seek manufacturing SMEs with an interest in automation and robotics in order to form a consortium with potential SME end-users and use-cases. Please look at the Open Call and contact project manager Emil Løvgren if you have any questions.
For more specific services related to the digital transformation initiative in Energy Valley, look at our Services section.