The Blue Growth Community organizes its mid-term conference, entitled “Med Blue Economy in Action: Blue Business Tools for SMEs”, in the framework of the MedaWeek Barcelona 2021.
On 18th November 2021, the Blue Growth Community organized its mid-term conference, in the framework of the Mediterranean Week of Economic Leaders (MedaWeek Barcelona), one of the most iconic economic conferences for the Mediterranean business sector, with the aim to present the main results coming from the MED Blue Growth projects to the participating private sector.
This mid-term conference, entitled “Med Blue Economy in Action: Blue Business Tools for SMEs”, was the opportunity for experts and companies participating in the MED Blue Growth projects to share their experiences and best practices to the Mediterranean Blue Economy sector and show real possibilities of investment and economic development offered by these projects as examples of Sustainable Blue Economy.
The event opened with some welcome words from the Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Scienze del Mare - CoNISMa, the Lead Partner of the Blue Growth Community, on the importance of this second phase of implementation of the Blue Growth project, focused on putting in place activities for capitalising the results of the MED Blue Growth projects and the Joint Secretariat of the INTERREG MED program about the need to secure these results and ensure their contribution, some possibilities of investment and challenges were presented. Thus, the EU initiative “BLUEINVEST” presented the main features of this investment platform to boost innovation into sustainable technologies for the Blue Economy. In addition, the BLUE DEAL’s representative presented the “Open innovation challenge” as a strategy for the efficient matching of demand and supply of innovation, explaining the 12 challenges related to the Blue Energy sector and the possibilities offered to all those innovative companies, start-ups or research centres that would like to participate and propose solutions.
After these initial reflections, the different SMEs participating on behalf of the MED Blue Growth projects structured in two different sessions addressed to the Innovative Blue Funding and the Blue Economy, presented their main results.
During the first session, moderated by the School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering of the National technical University of Athens (NTUA), the audience had the chance to hear the positive perception and experiences of several companies on three innovative funding solutions:
a) The BLU MARINE SERVICE SOC COOP for Italy, which highlighted as positive features of the “Voucher Scheme”, the speed for evaluation, the zero cost of the consultancy and funding for the beneficiary,
b) SYNDESEAS from Cyprus, which evaluated very positively the “Crowdfunding campaign” as a mechanism for raising money, testing your ideas and increase the awareness on you product,
c) Northern Light S.r.l. from Italy for the Mistral Business Plan Competition, which commented that its participation on the competition allowed them to upgrade their skills in different manners.
At their turn, during the second session moderated by IrADIARE, the participating SMEs also advanced some positive elements for the different presented Blue Economy solutions:
a) SEAentia from Portugal commented as a positive aspect the ease of use of the “Circularity self-assessment tool” of BLUEfasma
b) Ecocean from France underlined the support and the positive impact thanks to the “Coaching programme for SMEs” attended by her company in the context of the Psamides project.
Finally, with the aim of strengthening the transferring of the presented results to the Mediterranean private sector, ASCAME on behalf of the Blue Growth Community carried out an interactive exercise with the on-line attending companies. Thus, the audience was invited to reply the MENTIMETER quizz on the presented results from the MED Blue Growth projects, with an invitation to those interested companies to become "takers".