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ODYC has +20 years of experience in IT, cloud and hosting of innovative projects. In this interview, Koen Uyttenhove shares more about his experience as a SmartAgriHubs DIH. 

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For us, this was our real startup of ODYC as a DIH on innovation in the agro-food domain.

The financial and network support was crucial in the set-up of the DIH structure. Without this project, ODYC would not have been started or it would have been started probably much later. The experience was good, the only unforeseen item was COVID which limited our participation to some activities. 

In my opinion, we also need to work much more on scaled innovation, as I  mentioned during the DIH panel in Lisbon. Scaled innovation means taking innovation at a national or regional scale, to be able to help a broader community or other stakeholders.

It was a very good experience with enriching interactions.

We need to network really to improve and move on into the domain of innovation in agro-food. Building and maintaining SmartAgriHubs' EU network is crucial in my opinion. The final event was very much needed after COVID, in order to reconnect with stakeholders. I think we also need to link DIH much more in the future, building further the network of hubs. 

We want to further grow our DIH, especially in the Western European area.

Therefore, we are reaching out to new EU projects and hope to continue building ODYC's network. 

We are also curious to know more about the continuation of SmartAgriHubs. In the meantime, ODYC has helped customers in FR, NL and BE. The relationship with ILVO in Belgium will be extended and broadened.

Agri Epi-centre is a Digital Innovation Hub based in the United Kingdom.

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We joined Smart Agri Hubs as a DIH to extend our network and keep informed about developments with agri-tech funding, innovation and the tech community in Europe, especially looking for new collaborations.

What we found especially valuable was the opportunity to get involved in open calls, through which we launched two agri-tech hackathons which gave us the opportunity to work with new and existing partners, in new ways. We hope to continue hackathons as part of our annual events and engagement programme in the future.

We have also been able to make new contacts within other DIHs and competence centres around Europe, and participate in online events and the regular regional cluster meetings. While these have been online due to Covid it has still been very worthwhile and interesting to make new connections and hear about different approaches taken across Europe.

We continue to grow our membership network and have built our technical and operational capacity to strengthen our support offer to our members and the wider agri-tech ecosystem.

Despite the challenges of Brexit, we remain hopeful to work with partners outside the UK on shared challenges, and we are engaged in various networks including agROBOfood, EIT-Food as well as Smart Agri Hubs in order to build collaborations.

Neorurale Hub defines itself as a "natural laboratory". This Digital Innovation Hub develops innovative solutions for natural resource saving, based on circular economy principles. In this article, Carlotta Manzoni shares with us her experience. 

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I joined SmartAgriHubs as soon as I joined NeoruraleHub leading the Innovation Center Giulio Natta, unfortunately only during the last phase of the whole process.

Hence, my experience as a SmartAgriHubs DIH has been quite short, yet intense and full of useful insights and learning. I joined as I was in charge of developing the Innovation Center of a company built on the principles of circular economy and regenerative agriculture in a rural area between Milan and Pavia and I thought that the SAH network would provide me with best practices and connections.

And I was right. I followed a capacity building course, which has been really useful in organizing my ideas and exploring known and new tools to better structure our business model and services. Additionally, the course and the platform in a broader sense, helped me connect with other hub managers who gave me some valuable advice.

When I was asked to join the panel, I was really surprised as I joined the whole program only in the final stage and with a marginal role. Hence, I am even more grateful for the opportunity of being one of the panellists.

Frank Berkers was an excellent moderator, and the panel session has been super interactive. The main takeaway I’d like to share can be summarized in the importance and value of connections and knowledge sharing.

First, among DIH, sharing best practices and – why not? – even assets and other resources, for the sake of innovation, which needs to run faster and faster if we want to accelerate the development of solutions to face today’s (and tomorrow’s) challenges. Additionally, connections among actors working with the DIH.  

First, I hope we can continue to benefit from the network and the connections created around SmartAgriHubs. 

The AgENt (Agrifood Ecosystem Navigator) platform could be the answer to such a need, indeed we applied to be a test user of the platform. We are testing it with enthusiasm, trying to figure out how the tool can facilitate and improve our community building, engagement, and management activities, as well as boost our services out of our direct reach. 

Additionally, we will strengthen collaboration agreements with incubators, accelerators, and universities to spread the idea of piloting and testing in the agri and circular bioeconomy fields through the test field model as a booster for innovation.

INNOVATE is an association of several digital centres in Austria. This Digital Innovation Hub is supported by the Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs and other federal states. They focus on agriculture, forestry and energy.

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As DIH Innovate, we now have almost 2 years of experience behind us. During this time, it has been very exciting for us to develop further together with SMEs in the areas of agriculture, forestry, wood and energy.

With our program formats, we have now reached a large number of SMEs and have been able to implement many projects and further advance digitization in Austria.

The joint exchange with the SmartAgriHubs was also very enriching for us as DIH Innovate, as we had the opportunity to get in touch with other countries and DIHs as well as EDIHs and to get to know promising projects that are also very interesting for Austria. 

We are grateful for this network, its expertise and its support! 

INNOVATE is going to become a EDIH. During the Final Event, which was really a lot of fun, many new and good contacts were made and the Smart Agri Hubs network will help us as EDIH very much in the future.