Communications and eco-system building are vital for the long-term success of the SmartAgriHubs project. Read more about why the strategies behind them matter to you, the partners. 

The Ecosystem Building Strategy is one of SmartAgriHubs’ many project deliverables. Published in April, it outlines the means to sustain and expand the European agri-tech innovation network to help the SmartAgriHubs members establish a pan-European, multi-stakeholder innovation ecosystem. The strategy shows how the creation of this ecosystem can: realise effective engagement with all stakeholders in the network; cover all the regions in Europe to demonstrate the successes of the Digital Innovation Hubs’ (DIH) work; and ensure that interaction between all stakeholders is provided through the Innovation Portal.  

Moreover, the process of ecosystem building is divided in three phases (Sowing, Flowering and Harvesting), and for each phase actions are further divided at the ecosystem levels (within DIHs, between DIHs and beyond SmartAgriHubs). Throughout, the strategy identifies a focus, main target groups, and proposes activities towards expanding the ecosystem. For more information, a link to the document can be found on the SmartAgriHubs website under ‘Deliverables’. 

A crucial part of building the SmartAgriHubs ecosystem is effective communication, both between all project partners and to external stakeholders. To this end, WP1 published the “communication and dissemination strategy” in February. The strategy is designed to help the network and its members to communicate effectively. The document shows how communication can ensure that all target audiences understand the project and how communication can change behaviour and perceptions in the agri-tech sector. Demonstrating the successes of DIHs and FIEs from all over Europe form the basis of our project communication. The communication and dissemination strategy also includes an extensive Social Media Strategy.  The document can be found on the SmartAgriHubs website under ‘Deliverables.

During the last week of May the SmartAgriHubs social media channels cast a spotlight on Regional Cluster Iberia. This is part of the Regional Cluster week campaign where a week is dedicated to each RC, its Flagship Innovation Experiments, Digital Innovation Hubs and Competence Centres. As part of RC Iberia’s week, the RC and the SmartAgriHubs communications team organized a social media contest in which Gradiant won with the following post:

Gradiant is an industry-oriented Research and Technology Organization based in Vigo, Spain. They specialise in connectivity, intelligence and security. Their digital expertise is oriented to a wide number of market sectors in need of digital technologies and services, which include the agri-food sector.  

In FIE 23 ‘Digitising the Dairy Production Chain’, Gradiant is the Competence Centre with expertise in digital technologies. Their main role is to provide support to the five Galician SMEs engaged in the FIE (Seragro, Monet Viticultura, Elmega, 3edata and Alltech Spain) that are developing innovations across the dairy production chain, ranging from prediction of yield and protein in forage or optimisation of automated feed mixes, to automated barn monitoring or integrated multi-vendor farm information management. Our support comes in the form of technology scouting, development and integration, and complements the support provided by the other two Competence Centres, the University of Santiago de Compostela, and AGACAL-CIAM.