i3-INSHAPE

I3-INSHAPE aims to strengthen the European digital economy by developing the ClusSport Partnership (recognized by the EU in the smart specialisation area (S3) of sports and vitality) into a European competence centre for SME initiatives in the field of sports and vitality/technology: the I3-INSHAPE Innovation and Investment Hub, where we will accelerate interregional innovation investments related to sports and vitality/technology and bring them to the market.

The project supports mature SME-led innovations in the commercialisation and scale-up phases to capture opportunities in this fast-growing global market. As such with I3-INSHAPE we contribute to solving the problem of increasingly inactive lifestyles across the general population, recognised as a major cause of increased levels of chronic and endemic diseases across the population (diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer and cancer).

The approach is demand-driven. The consortium wants to link Key challenges for SMEs identified to data-driven growth, upscaling innovations and bringing them to the market:

1. missing interregional connections to building value chains and expanding market presence;
2. digitalization of services & products and better access to data,
3. business and innovation support: user-driven innovation, scale-up, commercialization and access to financing.

The project will build the portfolio of interregional investment (I3) cases (TRL6-9) up from 5 pre-selected FLAGSHIP SME I3 cases (included in the partnership) and another 30+ SME I3 Cases selected during the project via a series of bottom-up OPEN CALLS. The 30+SME I3 Cases will benefit from cascade funding to A) address specific needs/requests from Flagship SMEs and B) build a second Stream of additional I3 cases, thereby contributing to building interregional value chains around the Flagship and Second Stream I3 cases.

Finally, the project will transform the I3-INSHAPE Innovation & Investment Hub into a self-sustaining, demand driven ecosystem carrying on beyond the lifetime of this proposal.