Last June, GAIA participated in the mission organized to Sofia in Bulgaria under the project EXCITE. In this mission to Bulgaria which was hosted and organized by our local project partner Digital Transformation and Innovation, a cluster dedicated to the digital transformation, we also had the opportunity to meet first time physically under this new COSME Exchange project. In this project we are participating together with other 5 clusters from different European regions, which are Slicon Saxony as project coordinator, Digital Transformation & Innovation, Marzovia ICT, Vilnius Hive and Pole SCS.

During this 3 dedicated missions days, we had the opportunity to participate in several matchmakings and study visits to the local ecosystem. First, we had the chance to more about the local support and programs from institutions. Then we also heard about success cases on innovation actions and local companies with new innovative technologies. There were also some representatives from other different European initiatives like I4MS or C2Future about internationalization and cascade funding projects. We also had the opportunity to present our EXCITE project to the Bulgarian ecosystem and hear about innovative projects from companies.

We finally made very relevant on site study visits to the local ecosystem and relevant initiatives, such as Sofia Tech park or the Super Computer In the EXCITE project we are aiming to build relationships, make exchanges of best practices and know more about other European ecosystems like ours. We are also aiming to increase the interactions within our ecosystems and Small and Medium Enterprises by creating dedicated exchanges.

We are looking forward for next missions and project actions.