Capitalising on Collaboration: How Synergies Drive Lasting Regional Innovation

It may sound abstract — until you experience it firsthand.

After an intensive month-long effort, our consortium has submitted a follow-up project, PilotInnCities.gov, to the Interreg Danube Region Programme (3rd Call for Proposals). Although our current PilotInnCities project is still underway, we are already looking ahead: exploring how to capitalise on what we are developing so that these activities do not end with isolated outputs, but translate into lasting impact.

Integrating Agile Piloting into Regional Governance

For us, the next logical step is clear: embedding Agile Piloting into regional governance frameworks. This would empower regional authorities to actively steer innovation ecosystems, support value creation across their territories, and adopt a practical, collaborative, and repeatable approach to innovation management.

Building Meaningful Synergies

Throughout the proposal development, we were fortunate to form several synergies that naturally enriched the project design.

A key example is our connection with the RIPPLE initiative under the Danube Region Strategy (EUSDR) Priority Area 8, led by VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH (Dr. Silke Schmidt, Anastasiia V.) and the Ukrainian Institute for International Politics (Nadija Afanasieva). This collaboration has enabled the latter to join the project as a partner, strengthening the proposal with a dedicated transfer role towards Ukraine and Moldova. Remarkably, this evolved just one month after we had — almost by coincidence — hosted a RIPPLE workshop in Prague at the premises of our lead partner, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic.

The synergies did not stop there.

• Forum Virium Helsinki (Finland) — whose support in 2023 introduced Agile Piloting to broader audiences in the Danube Region — joined the proposal as an Associated Strategic Partner. Their involvement helps advance international agile piloting methodologies and creates a natural bridge to the CommuniCity Horizon Europe project, which has been a major methodological inspiration for our work.

• Landkreis Wunsiedel i. Fichtelgebirge (Germany) currently hosts five of our 27 ongoing pilots. Building on this experience, they decided to join the follow-up project as a full project partner, further capitalising on the momentum created through real-life piloting.

• Džemal Bijedić University of Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina), currently an Associated Strategic Partner in our ongoing project, has likewise chosen to step up and take on a more active role.

Looking Ahead

We extend our sincere gratitude to all partners — both long-standing and new — for their trust, cooperation, and enthusiasm throughout this process.

With the proposal now submitted, we return our focus to the ongoing implementation of 27 agile pilots across the Danube Region.
Updates are coming soon — well before Christmas.