Experimentation of Cross-Border Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) Cooperation and Impact on SME Services

As digital transformation imposes cultural changes in terms of how value is delivered, continual experimentation helps define optimal solutions for key stakeholders. From the DIH perspective, the hunt is on for the most impactful and financially sustainable services that lend themselves to practical customisation against target group needs. Among these, fostering cross-border collaboration amongst themselves and between SMEs is also a desirable, albeit challenging strategy to be pursued by DIHs. We present the approach of DigiFed (European Commission funded project), which relies on a network of 12 DIHs and Research Technology Organisations (RTOs) to design and experiment with novel innovation support mechanisms for SMEs across Europe. We analyse the currently implemented cross-border cooperation instruments and their preliminary results and describe additional instruments under ongoing experimentation. We also elaborate on prospects to generalise these instruments for adoption by other DIH networks.