Project partners' visit to Estonia
On the first day of the visit, representatives of the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture of Estonia, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications of Estonia and the Agricultural Registers and Information Board of Estonia gave an overview of Estonia's long-term plans in the field of digitization, shared experiences of applying innovative approaches in the development of services and presented best practices in connection with digitization.
On the second day of the visit, the Tallinn University of Technology innovation center was visited, where the AI & Robotics Estonia team explained how they help companies put AI and robotics solutions into practice, including in food manufacturing companies.
We also met with representatives of the Central Estonia Business Incubator, with whom we had a very substantive conversation about the importance of the business incubators and rural enterprise hubs in a rural area away from larger cities. The manager of the Central Estonia Enterprise Incubator shared his experiences from the incubator's perspective, and the benefits of the incubator were explained by a resident of the incubator, whose business is the manufacture of automation equipment for the food industry.
In the second half of the day, the partners of the ORIGINN project had the opportunity to visit the Food and Fermentation Technology Development Center's laboratory complex and get an overview of new developments in the field of food production in a broader sense, as well as the specific services that the development center mainly offers to companies related to the field of food.
At the end of a day rich in information and experience, the ORIGINN team visited the Tehnopol Science and Business Park and the Start-up incubator there, where we got a comprehensive overview of the environment, services and measures in Estonia aimed at encouraging the development of startup companies in the digital field.
While the focus of the first two days of the visit was getting to know Estonia's experiences, approaches and best practices in relation to digitalization, the seminar on the third day of the visit gave all the partners the opportunity to share their approaches and best practices in promoting the field of digitalization both in raising awareness and boosting digitalization among small businesses and introducing e-services by the public sector.
According to the partners, such a visit is a very good way to get an overview of different approaches and best practices in dealing with specific challenges. In this case, in areas related to digitization.