Deliverable 2.1 Benchmark report

Today Europe faces the big challenge to restore the prosperity, mainly through job creation, regional growth and investments. RIS3 priorities are perfect drivers to boost regional development together with the KET on Advanced Manufacturing. Moreover, economic convergence of European regions is also an overarching priority of the European Commission that requires overcoming industrial competitiveness gaps. In this regard, technology centres and regional clusters are identified as enablers to reach these objectives, and cooperation structures and interregional exchange of good practices an opportunity to increase the competitiveness of European regions. Accordingly, it is clear that interregional cooperation improvement among innovation and transference entities and SMEs is crucial for the advancement of the European manufacturing industry. Advanced Manufacturing is key for the movement towards factories of the future and Efficient and Sustainable Manufacturing is the first step in this way. To this end, ERICA project aims at establishing an interregional cluster partnership strategy leaded by the main innovation and transference institutions (both clusters and technology centres) of each participating region (Catalonia, Lombardy, Nord-Pas de Calais and South Netherlands) in order to overcome current industry needs and constrains towards Advanced Manufacturing Smart Specialisation Strategy, with a special focus on Efficient and Sustainable Manufacturing (ESM). In order to address ERICA objectives the first step is to analyse the state-of-the-art of participating clusters and technology centres in the project and their offering to SMEs to identify bottlenecks and opportunities for collaboration between them. This objectives has been addressed within WP2 of the project. This document as Deliverable 2.1 is the report of tasks and activities done within WP2 of the project and the related outcomes and results.