On 11 May 2023 Egils Berins was representing EDI in “Igniting DIH collaboration with BOWI” event that was held in Brussels Thon Hotel EU.

BOWI stands for Boosting Widening Digital Innovation Hubs. BOWI aims to build a digital innovation hub (DIH) network based on experience and practice sharing. A network that will support companies in turning their most innovative projects to life, aid investors in discovering the leaders of digital revolution and help development agencies understand the needs of industry.

As part of the Digitising European Industry Strategy, BOWI contributed to ensure that any business in Europe has access to a Digital Innovation Hub and also received support from other DIHs outside their region. Within BOWI DIHs from different regions have been collaborating through joint highly innovative cross-border experiments. The vision of the collaboration between DIHs in BOWI is to improve the competitiveness of the regions by more efficient and effective use of regional capacities. Therefore BOWI explored the mechanisms that connect hubs from widening regions with other DIHs, by encouraging the creation of corridors or collaboration avenues that go beyond the ad-hoc collaboration. The  BOWI event presented the results of the project, the tools and methodologies that have been developed to forge the collaboration between DIH. Information was shared by the DIHs participating in the programme, explaining their success story, lessons learned and tips to collaborate with other DIHs.

During the event there was organised „Hands on corridor building”workshop to create a  recipe how to establish a fruitful and long-lasting collaboration with other (E)DIHs.

 Egils Berins participated in one of 6 groups of this workshop.  His group created a strategy how to secure the collaboration corridor between countries, explained possible risks and necessary activities.  The event facilitated great networking opportunities.