Serbia Innovates will create the first Serbian Supercluster to bolster country’s competitive advantages on international markets
ICT Hub, as a Center for Technological Entrepreneurship and Innovation, with the support of USAID Serbia, launched the Serbia Innovates Project. This project will last four-and-a-half-years and will be working on creating an innovations-friendly environment that will accelerate the development, introduction and scale-up of new economic models. The goal of the project will be to strengthen the innovation driven Serbian economy, encouraging its further development, competitiveness, and export potential.
The idea behind the project is to create new opportunity to strengthen Serbia’s economy through the model that enforces sustainable innovation development and encourage industry leaders, traditional companies, small and medium-sized companies, startups and academic and research institutions to innovate and collaborate on large-scale projects, in order to speed up growth in some of Serbia’s most promising industries.
“The project will create systemic change, bringing new, sophisticated production, using some of the most advanced methods in delivering innovative products and becoming the source of Serbia’s competitive advantage on international market. Our aim is to recognize Serbia’s most promising domains of innovation and enable the formation of the first Serbian Supercluster in this field. As a globally proven methodology, it represents an effective platform for promoting and enforcing innovation development, building innovation friendly environments, and providing adequate institutional support and sufficient financing”, said Aleksandra Popović, director of the Serbia Innovates project, and added “It will offer a competitive edge that boosts the entire economy, opening a whole new world of opportunities”.
The project will map the fields of innovation in the country, conduct a massive research and identify four competitive domains in which Serbia has the greatest potential. Their potential in real environment will be tested by conducting 4 separate supercluster pilots, eventually choosing one final domain, scaling it and implementing the development of the first Serbian Supercluster.
By building key partnerships with investment groups including SMEs, startups, key industry leaders, investors, academia, relevant government institutions and forming a Venture Capital fund generating external funding to specific projects produced by the supercluster, further access to finance will be made possible for innovative companies.
With that support system, further access to finance will be made possible for innovative companies, as well by forming a Venture Capital fund generating external funding to specific projects produced by the supercluster. By communicating, explaining, educating and promoting the purpose of the activity to all stakeholders, the project will work on improving the image of Serbian products and attracting additional investments.