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By investing in SMEs, the INSHAPE project aims to build interregional value chains in sports and vitality companies that reflect the excellence and opportunities of the partner regions. It also intends to pave the way towards the commercialization and expansion of innovative products and services that contribute to active and healthy lifestyles in Europe.
The specific objectives of the INSHAPE project are the following:
- Invest in flagship SMEs that are already part of the project to meet their needs and help them enter the market.
- Identify and involve more than twenty SMEs thanks to the project's cascade financing scheme and create new initiatives.
- Strengthen the digitization of SMEs to facilitate interregional innovation processes and support SMEs in the interregional innovation ecosystem.
- Further develop and strengthen the inter-regional innovation hubs in sports and technology and make the INSHAPE hub a self-sustaining European competence center in the field of sport and vitality with a positive impact on innovative companies and on the health and well-being of society.
In addition to ACCIÓ, twenty entities and companies from the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Hungary and Spain participate in the consortium. Among others, Stichting Sports and Technology (Cluster S&T) from the Netherlands, and, respectively, the leader of the consortium and the Catalan partner, the Catalan Association of the Sports Industry Cluster (INDESCAT) and its partner company, Onalabs.
The project is fully aligned with ACCIÓ's priorities in the area of Clusters, and it acts within the sport, vitality and technology sector. It will support SME-led innovations in the commercialization and scale-up phases to capture opportunities in this fast-growing global market. As such, INSHAPE will contribute to solving the problem of increasingly inactive lifestyles in the general population, recognized as one of the main causes of increasing levels of chronic and endemic diseases throughout the population (diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer and cancer).