Europe selects the Basque Digital Innovation Hub as candidate for the Challenge Initiative award

• Basque SMEs may access the technological resources and R+D infrastructures of the over 25 BDIH members, technological centres, university, training centres and business R+D centres through BDIH

The Basque Digital Innovation Hub (BDIH) is one of the four European candidates who may win the Champions Challenge Award next 27 January, granted by the European network Digital Innovation Hubs DIHnet, in acknowledgement of regional initiatives to support the digital transformation of European SMEs. This is the second edition.

Thus, one of these four finalists is the Digital Innovation Hub of the Basque Country, the Basque Government's winning bet to establish an infrastructure to facilitate the sustainable digital transformation of Basque companies. The BIDH has been operating for four years. It is upheld by a public-private collaboration where the government itself acts as a catalyst for the resources and undertakes the commitment to make them available to companies.

Basque SMEs may access the technological resources and R+D infrastructures of the over 25 BDIH members, technological centres, university, training centres and business R+D centres through the Basque Digital Innovation Hub. These resources are available in a catalogue of assets available to companies that can be viewed on the Spri Group webpage. The services associated with these assets currently refer to the fields of Additive Manufacturing, Flexible Robotics, Smart and Connected Machines, Cybersecurity, and Advanced Materials. Two new hubs are also in the process of being created, on digital electric networks and digital medical devices.

The award shall be granted during the annual Digital Innovation Hub conference, organised by the European Commission and the DIHnet network on 26 and 27 January 2021, with over 2,000 attendees https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/european-digital-innovation-hubs-conference. During this conference, the Director of Technology, Innovation and Sustainability at SPRI Group and organiser of this initiative, Cristina Oyón, shall introduce BDIH'S activity in two sessions, introducing the services provided by Basque Digital and the collaborations established with other respectively similar European initiatives.

Basque Digital Innovation Hub's activity as a tool to facilitate testing and validation of digital and sustainable solutions was recently recognised by the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyer, with a specific mention of the Basque initiative to support the digital transformation during her last speech at the last plenary session of the Committee of the Regions. Von der Leyen used the Basque Government's digitisation policy, through its Basque Digital Innovation Hub (BDIH) project, as an example.