The headquarters of the facility promoted by the Region of Basilicata in collaboration with the AREA Science Park have been inaugurated. The first monitoring and business valorisation measures and research results are underway.

In addition to excellent research structures committed to cutting-edge sectors - earth observation, agroindustry, environment, energy - in Basilicata there is a dynamic production context, comprising primarily of small and medium companies. Basilicata Innovazione, an initiative of the Basilicata Region and AREA Science Park in Trieste, the leading Science and Technology Park in Italy, targets these leaders in development - business managers and researchers.

Basilicata Innovazione was inaugurated today, an event attended by representatives from the public authorities, businesses and research bodies.The general headquarters which host this ambitious project are spacious and modern. They aim to create a stable reference point in the Basilicata region dedicated to offering services and instruments to support technological transfer and innovation.

Drawing on the consolidated experience of AREA, Basilicata Innovazione will provide local companies with a single access point for get into contact - on a local, national and international level - with the state-of-the-art of applied research, in order to locate expertise, partners, financing and helpful assistance with innovative projects.

This combination of activity and services can have a significant impact on the business framework, and the results seen in Friuli Venezia Giulia speak for themselves: in this region, in recent years more than 1700 companies, most of which are SMEs, have benefited from assistance along their path towards innovation and technological improvement and 2600 measures were implemented to raise awareness, assistance with patents, documentation and analysis of competitive positioning.

Basilicata Innovazione provides a complete range of services to promote the creation of new products, making company processes increasingly efficient and environmentally friendly, improving internal organization and developing new companies, drawing on the results of local research. Additionally, as part of this project, research into alliances for enhancing expertise that already exists locally has already begun.

Thanks to the work of the Basilicata Region and AREA Science Park, local companies will be supported along various paths: identifying solutions aimed at improving corporate products/processes, gathering information on competitors in order to develop new collaboration opportunities for the development of sector studies, accessing patent information, and improving production processes thanks to the use of new materials. A team of thirty young people from Basilicata has been recruited for this purpose.

They are graduates from different professional areas: from experts in enhancing scientific research to patent information and documentation professionals, specialists in the start-up of companies and technological brokers. Their task is to identify the needs of innovation and technology on a case-by-case basis, and to pinpoint solutions, thanks in part to the contribution of universities and research centres.

The local team will also help companies developing executive innovation projects, identifying optimal technical expertise, evaluating the impact of innovation in the company, contributing to the planning and programming of necessary interventions, organizing project teams and managing communications internally, as well as monitoring progress of the initiatives.

Other important aspects include internationalization, the creation of new companies and evaluating research results. Work began a few weeks ago, and the production departments of 52 companies have already been visited (20 in the province of Potenza and 32 in the province of Matera): 27 companies in the agri-foodstuffs industry, 13 in wood and furniture, 2 in construction materials, 5 in engineering, 2 in industrial automation and 3 in the service industry.

"Basilicata Innovazione" the Chairman of the Region, Vito De Filippo said, "will be very rewarding for the region and its companies. We need to put more innovation and research into our production system, and in order to reach this objective we chose AREA Science Park, which we consider to be the best partner in Italy and beyond. This collaboration will certainly be rewarding for our region, because AREA has extraordinary international experience, which we hope to use as the basis for developing our production systems and for inserting Basilicata in a network of relations to expand research, innovation and technological transfer to companies."

"We are very satisfied with this collaboration" the Chairman of the AREA Science Park, Giancarlo Michellone, says, "as it represents a first important step in the territorial diversification strategy of AREA, thanks to which we aim to support the competitive edge of Italian regions with the highest potential for development. These initiatives have contributed to boosting our organisation and provided a concrete demonstration of how support to local business development is a very current issue at any time, and especially in these difficult times.They also demonstrate how good practices developed by public bodies, such as AREA, may be transferred to other bodies, all to the advantage of efficiency and the use of resources, and have a high propensity for success."

SMEs in Basilicata will also have access to partner identification and technological transfer services through AREA's network of international collaboration. As for start-up, technical assistance will be provided in all stages necessary to create a new company, from evaluating economic sustainability to drawing up a business plan.

With regard to the results of research, potential industrial users will be identified, assistance will be provided for negotiating agreements regarding intellectual property rights, partnerships will be created for joint R&D and support provided for drawing up contracts. The agreement also allows for the training of entrepreneurs and managers, activating an integrated programme of training, information and personalized consultation services dedicated to businesses and personnel at SME.

Basilicata Innovazione is an initiative financed by FESR 2007-2013 and FAS 2007-2013.