Italia-Croatia

About

The SEAS project addresses a significant innovation gap and limited cross-border cooperation within the Italian and Croatian Adriatic Sea Blue sector. The region is characterised by insufficient collaboration between SMEs and research institutions, which hinders the adoption of new technologies and slows progress towards the essential green transition. Additional efforts are urgently needed to boost SME access to international markets and knowledge transfer.
The core objective of SEAS is to systematically enhance the competitiveness and sustainability of the Blue Economy by strengthening innovation capacities. The project aims to stimulate SMEs to develop new, added-value products and services and encourage their robust involvement in technology transfer activities. It also focuses on facilitating the crucial collaboration of young researchers in business activities to introduce fresh, knowledge-driven perspectives.
To achieve this, SEAS provides targeted financial and non-financial support. This includes aid schemes with obligatory cross-border collaboration, alongside non-financial support such as B2B partnership building, targeted training in digital and sustainable technologies, and educational programmes for intellectual property protection and access to finance. This comprehensive support ensures a lasting boost to cross-border innovation across the programme area.