Blender Workshop Rosanna Capone - Province of Rome

Birmingham 17.10.2014

The broker’s role in the EU context

Brokers have a fundamental role in operating within an innovative/creative ecosystem

Broker has to operate in a network to connect businesses and bridge gaps between different sectors (as reported in Cross-Innovation toolkit)

Broker has different skills/knowledge depending on the context (geographical and industrial) he operates

Brokers must have the capacity to adapt themselves to the ecosystem they are

dealing with

Trans-sectoral competencies and deep knowledge of the context are crucial factors

The broker’s role in the EU context

Industrial landscape characterized by high volume of «old» (more than 35 years from the foundation) and small companies

Low availability to share info and/or to open to external collaboration

Stratified knowledge Reduced propension to new technologies (IT, new

media) and collaborative approach (matching events, collaborative projects, etc)

In «younger» EU countries the industrial landscape is different: more IT-skilled; more used to collaboration and networking; more updated on supporting instruments for the industrial developement (incubators, hubs,

fab labs, co-working, etc)

The broker’s role in the EU context

Broker has to:Dialogue with private organizations

exploiting information and competencies belonging to the public context

Manage trasversal expertises but with a focus on exclusive ones

Be cross-sectoral thanks to skills/knowledge sector-oriented

Have the capacity to report at trans-national level the collaboration opportunities available in the local ecosystem and viceversa

The broker’s role in the EU context

The ones we appointed as «broker» have these carachteristics and compentences?

Is it a role defined and explicit in each country or it’s necessary a specific tailored training to shape the broker?

Has to be public or private?