The innovation ecosystem of the EU is suffering from a strong fragmentation with a big gap between innovation leader regions and emerging innovators. This divide severely limits the potential for innovative Start-ups from emerging and moderate innovator region to access capital and get adequate support for bringing their innovations to market. To tackle these challenges, INNOVATE-EU will strengthen and connect five local innovation ecosystems: the innovation leader region Baden-Württemberg (BW) in Germany, the moderate innovator regions of Lithuania and Aragon in Spain and the emerging innovator regions of Latvia and Northeast Romania. Its goal is to address the innovation gap between these regions, connect them to an EU-wide network of innovation ecosystems, and strengthen their deep tech Start-ups and Scale-ups by building on three (fundamental) pillars: i) a detailed analysis of the target groups and needs of the local innovation ecosystems followed by knowledge exchange and a detailed action plan to address the disparities, ii) the formation of the interconnected and inclusive INNOVATE-EU innovation support community and its connection to European communities, iii) direct support and trainings for promising deep tech Start-ups and Scale-ups providing them with the necessary knowledge, tools, and contacts for successfully upscaling their business models and bringing their products to market. Through this approach INNOVATE-EU will create an interconnected and inclusive innovation ecosystem with access to a wider European innovation support community and concrete pathways for existing and emerging deep tech entrepreneurs to access growth and investment opportunities. This will result in the overcoming of the innovation gap between moderately and highly innovative regions in Europe and the unveiling of disruptive and otherwise hidden Start-ups and Scale-ups in deep tech.

DISCO will develop and demonstrate - in real-life conditions - a federated European urban freight (UF) data space as one stop shop of data sharing on digital urban logistics solutions and smart tools for ambitious decision making. It will be a continental Ten-T – oriented and distributed real-life ecosystem to prove its value via demonstrated and replicable Use Cases (UCs), build upon innovation drivers to code concrete transformation of urban planning and land use by an open and collaborative UF Data Space with a smart governance model. The DISCO UF Data Space is voluntary based (incentivized), co-created and open framework to achieve a radical transformation and alliance in purpose-oriented data sharing, enabling smart access, fast and resource efficient acquisition, and focused provision, improving knowledge and capacity of city authorities and planners guaranteeing future data availability for dynamic (and predictive) integrated urban logistics planning, synchronizing real-time demand for transport & warehousing with logistics supply, (e.g., as Uber matches the demand for private car transport service with its road drivers’ fleet). DISCO will support European urban logistics players in reducing economic, societal and technical dependence from private digital platforms owned by large global providers, magnifying the scope of a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) converging to data-driven Sustainable Urban Logistics Planning (SULPs), expanding them beyond traditional urban boundaries (e.g., rural areas, towns and suburbs, cities, and urban areas according to World Urbanization Prospects ) and beyond Covid-19, to optimally manage, monitor and dynamically predict city freight flows, changing urban nodes accessibility by properly serving Functional Urban Area - FUA on a larger, mixed-use, and flexible scale , and deliver advanced and well-informed planning and purpose oriented, optimised land use within a TEN-T and global dimension.

While Europeans can track and understand their personal transport emissions, they have little to no information regarding the impact of their online shopping deliveries and returns. This is due to a mix of challenges, including the complexity of calculating emissions across the e-commerce supply chain, and the limited regulatory levers public authorities have to influence greener practices. To overcome these challenges, GreenTurn brings together a diverse range of e-commerce stakeholders to co-create zero-emission logistics solutions, provide sound and transparent information on e-commerce footprints, and enable more sustainable delivery and return choices. The consortium comprises 14 partners from 7 different countries, and is further complemented by its Stakeholder Advisory Board, activated during key project moments. GreenTurn uses design thinking approaches to develop solutions which bridge between behavioural interventions (including incentives, nudges and gamification) and delivery and return options (such as time windows, in-store pick-ups and returnable packaging, among others). To test solutions, GreenTurn implements 5 complementary pilots involving 1 LSP, 1 marketplace provider and 1 retailer - as partners, and >8 LSPs, >3 marketplaces, >7 retailers - as stakeholders. Through the involvement of significant and diverse companies, the project has potential to reach and raise awareness among >30M e-commerce consumers from 5 countries: Poland, Spain, France, Greece and Austria. Advanced logistics systems allow the five pilots to offer, on average, 82% of delivery and return options as zero-emission. Besides, the GreenTurn pilots will touch upon social sustainability aspects too, for both customers (e.g., physical and digital accessibility), and e-commerce logistics employees (e.g., work conditions, market reintegration, etc.) Together with its public authorities, GreenTurn will translate results into policies that can secure uptake and long-term impact.

SOCIO-BEE proposes that community engagement and social innovation combined with Citizen Science (CS) through emerging technologies and playful interaction can bridge the gap between the capacity of communities to adopt more sustainable behaviours aligned with environmental policy objectives and between the citizen intentions and the real behaviour to act in favour of the environment (in this project, to reduce air pollution). Furthermore, community engagement can raise other citizens’ awareness of climate change and their own responses to it, through experimentation, better monitoring, and observation of the environment. This idea is emphasised in this project through the metaphor of bees’ behaviour (with queens, working and drone bees as main CS actors), interested stakeholders that aim at learning from results of CS evidence-based research (honey bears) and the Citizen Science hives as incubators of CS ideas and projects that will be tested in three different pilot sites (Ancona, Marousi and Ancona) and with different population: elderly people, everyday commuters and young adults, respectively. The SOCIO-BEE project ambitions the scalable activation of changes in citizens’ behaviour in support of pro-environment action groups, local sponsors, voluntary sector and policies in cities. This process will be carried out through low-cost technological innovations (CS enablers within the SOCIO BEE platform), together with the creation of proper instruments for institutions (Whitebook and toolkits with recommendations) that will contribute to the replication, upscaling, massive adoption and to the duration of the SOCIO-BEE project. The solution sustainability and maximum outreach will be ensured by proposing a set of public-private partnerships schemes and innovative targeted communication means to streamline exploitation and accessibility to the project impacts.