Specialisation and collaboration in the European Network of DIHs: Leading the way to a European Innovation Support Infrastructure

Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) have emerged as a European approach for more effective diffusion of digital technologies. DIHs develop skills and offer supporting services for digital transformation, in particular in SMEs and more recently also in public administration. This approach is based on stateof-the-art innovation ecosystem policy and best practices of innovation support infrastructures.

To support sustainable collaboration in the EU ecosystem an alignment of hubs in a European framework of specialisation and collaboration is needed. In this paper we suggest that the network of DIHs and future European DIHs can be a mechanism for the wider European Innovation Support Infrastructure needed for industrial transformation, by means of ‘collaborative specialisation’.

The DIH network can be a trailblazer for a truly European Innovation Support Infrastructure which will provide links to capacities, facilities and expertise for the twin digital and green transitions as well as supporting the shift to a more resilient EU. However, finding the right focus and complementarities requires a leadership approach on collaborative specialisation. The establishment of ‘corridors’ between EDIHs can be the tipping-point for more structural collaboration between European industrial ecosystems