Cluster development is an integrated policy tool in The Baltic Sea Region to increase impact of policies and to enhance cooperation between the public and private sectors.  However there is a broad gap in transnational cooperation and cross-border efforts to support SME based entrepreneurship and innovation beyond the interests from the single regions. 

Bridge-BSR will develop tools to overcome these gaps in ScanBalt BioRegion.  Bridge-BSR will identify regional bottlenecks in ScanBalt BioRegion for bringing the benefits of Academic research to SME´s, develop a regional innovation agenda, promote mentoring, use of best practises and bench marks, prepare action plans to remove bottlenecks and initiate pilot activities. The partners represent triple helix clusters, public authorities, a tech transfer specialist, a National Contact Point and a transnational cluster collaboration.

Bridge-BSR builds on:

Analysis: 
(1) An analysis of regional cluster innovation strategies for bridging academia and SME´s;
(2) An analysis of regional Intellectual property bottlenecks (IP) and development of IP indicators;
(3) An analysis of Regional SME financing bottlenecks and mapping of investors. Desk studies, workshops, expert panels, visits are the tools.

Pilot activities:  Bridge-BSR initiates 3 pilot “bridging” activities:
(1) Model development for transregional integration of IP-issues;
(2) A Top of Europe Life Science Foundation;
(3) Shared SME support service. 

Innovation Action Plan, Mentoring, Implementation: 
(1)An Innovation action plan for ScanBalt BioRegion will be prepared based on the analysis, the pilot activities and preparatory work. 
(2) A Bridge-BSR Innovation Council provides expert knowledge.
(3) The analysis and the Innovation Action Plan serve for mentoring and implementation of best practises between clusters, networks and regional/national authorities.