Scotland is one of eight European regions involved in a new Interreg Europe funded project called ACSELL (Accelerating SME innovative capacities with a Living Lab approach). ACSELL is co-ordinated by the University of Tübingen, Germany, and involves the partner regions of Flanders (Belgium), Timis (Romania), Northern Denmark, Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italy), Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Scotland.
The first Scottish Regional Stakeholder meeting took place in Edinburgh on 19 February 2020. The meeting, Chaired by Donna Henderson, Head of International Engagement, Scottish Government TEC and Digital Healthcare Innovation Directorate, set out for our Scottish Stakeholders, the scope of the ACSELL project and our objectives. In Scotland, we will focus our ACSELL activities on the digital health and care innovation ecosystem.
ACSELL aims to promote open innovation ecosystems and the early involvement of users in the innovation process. The 7 Regional Stakeholder Groups stakeholders will share their experiences with each other in order to improve their local policies and strategies in the area of open innovation, throughout the 5-year lifetime of the ACSELL project (August 2019 to July 2023).
After discussing the opportunity which the ACSELL project presents for Scotland, our respective experiences of the Living Lab approach, in particular, co-production, and the value of knowledge exchange opportunities which involve all stakeholders to inform how we develop and deliver services. The Group agreed next steps and work to be taken forward before we meet again in May 2020.