Smart V4 Strategies

South Poland Cleantech Cluster participates in a newly started Visegrad project together with partners – Czech Smart City Cluster, Slovak Smart City Cluster and Digitalis Jolet nonprofit from Hungary. The project “Smart V4 Strategies” was awarded financing support from the Visegrad Fund.

The aim of the project is to connect relevant partners in the given area of SMART strategies and prepare procedures for classification of SMART strategies in V4 countries into one complex database portal. The project offers V4 partners international cooperation in unifying SMART strategies to GreenDeal/SDG rules. The vision is to strengthen the unity and effectiveness in implementation of SMART strategies in all V4 countries.
More about the project

South Poland Cleantech Cluster

is the initiator of the krk UrbanHub project - a sustainable CEE (Central- and Eastern European) urbanization hub
krakowurbanhub is a partner in the urbanhub europe consortium of European cities consisting of BLOXHUB in Copenhagen, KIRAHub in Helsinki, Munich Urban Colab, FACTORY Hammerbrooklyn Hamburg, FAKTORY Berlin, Urban Resilience Hub Barcelona
krk UrbanHub is a national and international meeting place that engages people in architecture, design and sustainable urban development. This is done through exhibitions, debates, events, business development and new partnerships.
krk UrbaHhub is an ecosystem for creating cities of the future, and at the same time a space to share ideas, skills and strategies for designing buildings and urban development based on a people-centered approach and high standards of sustainable development, and a membership-based community combining urban development, architecture, design, design, construction, circular economy and digitization.
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South Poland Cleantech Cluster

SPCleantech is co-founder of European Alliance for Cross- Industrial Circular Economy Investments (ICEI Alliance) consisting of European clusters and universities. During 2020-2021 there have been held meetings to prepare the establishment of the European Alliance for Cross- Industrial Circular Economy Investments, hosted by the Circular Economy Centre at Digipolis, Kemi, Finland.

The ICEI Alliance has for ambition to make Europe the global industrial circular economy platform to accelerate the deployment of world-class circular economy solutions to industry. It acts as a pipeline of business-led circular economy investment projects. Alliance members support businesses with the structuring of their investment cases as well as with accessing funding and financing streams.
More information on ICEI Alliance

Workshop “Sustainability-oriented innovation and entrepreneurship (SOIE)”

 |  Category: SPCleantech News

On 22.05.2023, SPCleantech conducted a workshop for member companies on “Sustainability-oriented innovation and entrepreneurship (SOIE)”. During this workshop, SPCleantech shared the experience and knowledge developed during the EU project “IMPACT – Building values-based innovation cultures for sustainable business impact”. SPCleantech is a member of a consortium of European universities and companies that have been implementing this EU project for the last 3 years.

Most of the companies and organisations in EU are asked to adopt sustainability goals as part of their mission and innovation management. Many have explicitly adapted these strategies, but few have established inherent practices in their organizational culture and manage innovation based on values of corporate sustainability.Because the IMPACT project unites innovation scholars and practitioners to improve the teaching and coaching of sustainability-oriented innovation and entrepreneurship in higher education institutions and companies around Europe it makes it possible for participants to deliver better teaching materials, educational methods, as well as best practices for use by educators, coaches, managers and facilitators.

During the workshop SPCleantech and its member companies exchanged experiences and knowledge on how to translate sustainability strategies into innovation culture. The discussion during the workshop made us aware of the importance of redefining cultural routines, facilitateting values-based and sustainability-oriented ideation and innovation in the companies, integrating and engaging different stakeholders and promotingvalues-based innovation culture with positive impact. We have also learned that our member companies should concentrate and promote values-based innovation, i.e. innovation and entrepreneurship driven by values, rather than only external opportunities and short-lived interests.

The workshop was practice-based, sustainability-oriented, and result-driven meeting aiming to advance companies capacity and effectiveness in training and teaching sustainability-oriented innovation and entrepreneurship (SOIE). The ambition of the workshop is to drive innovation and entrepreneurship based on values of corporate sustainability, and to facilitate organisation-wide cultural change toward more sustainable innovation processes. With its explicit focus on sustainability, workshop made a unique contribution to effectively translating Europe’s new growth strategy presented in the “Green Deal” into an innovative educational program and business practice.

The workshop was based on methods for teaching and coaching SOIE toolkit, which includes a module on Sustainable Innovation Practices for professional development.

During the workshop following topics were presented for participating companies:

  • Cases of good practises: database with concrete examples and best practices for enhancing corporate sustainability through cultural development (e.g. contributing to the SGDs). This database includes internal practises, external stakeholder integration, strategic elaboration and implementation of sustainable business model patterns, and impact management.
  • Facilitation methods: “Sustainable Innovation Practices Toolkit” (SUIT I) of methods on how to best involve internal and external stakeholders in innovation-related activities, but also in the collaborative review and redefinition of cultural routines, implicit values, and hidden assumptions. This compendium  includes facilitation tools to diagnose and model sustainable business and to collect, aggregate and provide information and knowledge to improve sustainability performance.
  • Methods for teaching and coaching SOIE: Building on experiences and insights on previous knowledge alliance projects that IMPACT partner organizations have been involved (such as TACIT and GAMIFY) the project repurposes educational methods and develop new techniques for active debate and learning of sustainability-related facts, challenges and solutions.