Yorkshire goes speed dating in Europe

It may not be the usual approach to doing business overseas, but Yorkshire tried out a new way of meeting potential partners at a recent European ‘Speed Dating’ meeting held in Warsaw, Poland.

Trevor Gregory, director of Yorkshire Science, represented Yorkshire Forward and the science, technology and innovation aspirations of the Yorkshire and Humber region.

The aim of the event was to create opportunities for long-term collaboration both in business and joint research ventures, between innovation support players in the UK and complementary innovation support organisations from across the European Union.

Over 40 delegates attended the meeting with the potential to ‘speed date’ with 16 ‘would like to meet’ organisations.  Over a 15-minute session, delegates were able to meet representatives from key policy agencies, research organisations and selected innovative companies, to exchange ideas and discuss future potential projects.  At the end of the 15-minute sessions, delegates were encouraged to ‘rotate’ and meet another organisation.

Closer collaboration with Europe is one of the key strands of the Regional Innovation Strategy (RIS) and the event was a good opportunity to put this into practice, finding out about potential partners, working in similar fields of innovation.

Host organisation Technology Innovation Information (Tii) and EURADA opened the event and guest regions (Silesia, West Pomerania, Wielkoplska, Warmia and Mazury), each gave a twenty minute presentation.  These outlined the cluster strengths of each region, current innovation projects and areas of potential collaboration.

Mr Gregory said:  “This was a very effective system, we made contact with some interesting organisations and we shall definitely be pursuing potential associations further.

“I can certainly see some obvious links to be made between some of the attending regions and our universities and existing agencies.