Innovation Centres Ruhr

The project Innovation Centres Ruhr aims at developing a cooperative network of the 35 technology and start-up centres in the Ruhr region together with the municipal business development agencies. Up until now, the centres’ work has not followed an integrative approach and their degrees of success have varied. The centres lack modernisation on the one hand, as well as an overarching policy framework to effectively contribute to the important start-up and innovation landscape of Ruhr Metropolis on the other hand.

The project focusses on three aspects: the identification and usage of specialisation and development potentials; the initiation of a regional network including common activities and workshops between the centres; as well as the promotion of supra-regional visibility of the centres. The practice is implemented by the technology centres, local business development agencies, and further actors from business and science, encompassing 42 partners in total.

Through the novel region-wide network cooperation, the project generates synergies and new types of specialisation and development potentials regarding future technologies, allowing founders and SMEs to benefit from higher qualitative offerings. Both multilevel governance and S3 development for North Rhine-Westphalia and the sub-region of Ruhr Metropolis are expected to be improved through the project.