European Innovation ecosystem in offshore wind

Europe is the global leader in offshore wind on crucial features such as installed capacity, market leading companies and technology development. The offshore wind supply chains are crucial in delivering larger wind turbines, larger wind farms and the industrialisation of the industry and thus reduced costs. Optimising existing and develop new supply chains is crucial for delivering these results. A key challenge in facilitating the shift from traditional to emerging industries is to help SMEs understand and experience how their competences and technologies can be utilized in a new value chains. Innowind has chosen a systemic and holistic approach for developing and testing new measures and services to strengthen SMEs role in the offshore wind sector. The projects approach is to develop a European innovation ecosystem in the offshore wind sector. An innovation ecosystem is the term used to describe the large number and diverse nature of participants and resources that are necessary for innovation. The core stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem are: • Core business enablers such as the offshore clusters • Knowledge enablers such as research centres • Innovation enablers such as innovation hubs and business accelerators • Financial capital enablers such as public funding, venture capital and private equity • New market enablers such as clusters outside Europe This project addresses especially to build capacity, competence and network for the SMEs to target the value chains in the emerging offshore wind market.