November 2, 2020 – The most important international conference for innovation and regional development entitled “Innovative Regions Week in Europe – WIRE 2020”, will be held from 4 to 6 November 2020. This year, the WIRE conference will be held online and broadcast live.
The conference is organized by the Faculty of Economics in Split, with the support of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, and it will discuss the impact of innovation on regional development.
A special focus will be on the opportunities that innovation can bring to less developed regions and their importance for recovery from the corona crisis.
Using innovation for development
As organizers announce, this year’s 11th edition of the WIRE conference will highlight the possibilities and opportunities offered by research and innovation in tackling some of today’s greatest challenges such as climate change, water protection, healthy food production, and the creation of smart cities. The conference aims to encourage the construction of an innovation ecosystem that will reveal the potential of each region in the European Union and use creative approaches for successful regional acceptance of innovation.
There will be a debate on policies that should work for a balanced flow of highly skilled workers across Europe. It will also open the topic of why some regions have a large brain drain, while other regions attract more people, and how to stimulate innovation by exchanging intellectual capital.
The conference will be attended by the Minister of Science and Education Radovan Fuchs and other dignitaries, such as Jean-Eric Paquet, Director-General of the European Commission’s Research and Innovation Directorate, who will talk about the importance of funding science and innovation in Europe. The emphasis will be on the consequences of a pandemic for countries like Croatia.
Speakers include Roberta Capello, professor of regional economics at the Politecnico in Milan, and Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics, who will address the importance of innovation in less developed regions.
The WIRE conference aims to inspire and encourage the community to use innovation to influence the development of its region and society as a whole, with the European Union’s continued support for economic, social, and territorial cohesion.
Conference participants can expect a series of interesting lectures and discussions by experts from several European universities and scientific institutions. The most successful representatives of the European business community and representatives of local and regional self-government will talk, among other things, about how local entrepreneurial ecosystems, such as start-ups, can influence the development opportunities of remote and less developed regions, how innovation can be used to exploit marine resources in a sustainable way, and several other topics.
Improving the communities
Week of Innovative Regions in Europe has been organized since 2010, and since then annually brings together stakeholders from the research and innovation sector, EU policymakers, regional and national authorities, knowledge centers, clusters, innovative companies, and all other stakeholders who develop or want to develop innovations to improve the community they live in.
The WIRE conference is a platform that allows participants to discuss in one place about research, innovation, challenges, and opportunities in European regions, with a direct view of current and future European Union funding programs.
The conference is organized with the support of the European Commission, the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, the Ministry of Science and Education, the Split-Dalmatia County, and the City of Split.
The host of this year’s WIRE Conference edition is the Faculty of Economics in Split. The conference is being organized online for the first time due to the pandemic and will be broadcast live on the official website from 4 to 6 November. Participation is free, and participants only need to register.
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