The “ICT Calabria” Innovation Pole was established in 2011, as a link between companies, universities and research centres, with the main objective to stimulate innovative activities by promoting intensive interactions, sharing facilities and exchanging knowledge and expertise, contributing effectively to technology transfer, networking and information dissemination among the companies that make up the Pole.
The University of Calabria, the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, ICAR CNR, 2 public-private consortia and 21 companies, mainly of the ICT sector, are associated to the Pole that is managed by the ICT-SUD Competence Centre.
The Pole is part of the “Regional Network of Innovation Poles”, a strategic integrated project funded by POR Calabria with ERDF 2007-2013.
The ICT Pole has developed some basic innovation services, such as: sharing research infrastructure; networking and strategic marketing; exploitation of research results; observatory on ICT market and trends; etc. The Pole has also started a number of research projects involving both academic and industrial partners, with the main role of coordinating the participation of SME members thus enabling a wide technological transfer towards small companies which otherwise, as isolated entities, could have some difficulties to get at the edge of technological innovation.
Among others projects, we mention INMOTO (Information and Mobility for Tourism), a project funded within the PON Ricerca e Competitività 2007- 2013, which aims to define and develop an integrated system of novel services and applications for the creation, certification, organization, monitoring and promotion of tourism and a real-time platform to support Travel Mobility, and TETRIS (TETRA Innovative Open Source Services) a project concerned with enabling innovative services for Smart City/Smart Territory by means of technological tools and intelligent platforms for collecting, representing, managing and exploiting data and information gathered from sensors and devices deployed in the territory.
- ICT Observatory: The ICT Calabria Observatory was created to provide an information and decision support service for enterprises and research groups involved in the Innovation Pole. The service is aimed at creating surveys and analysis about evolving trends of ICT companies in the local production system; market trends in the ICT sector at regional, national and international level; demand for ICT coming from specific sectors and from the regional public administration.
- Training: a specific activity aiming at encouraging the training and the placement of qualified human resources in companies and the mobility of human capital between business companies and the research system.
- Development of research and innovative projects in the ICT sector.The Pole provides specialist consultancy to companies and to other external entities on the preparation of project proposals for accessing European, national and regional public funds. The main goal is to promote the growth of industrial and experimental research activities in the ICT sector in cooperation with public and private actors.
- Poléo: a web-based platform providing for free information and assistance on issues about innovation and internationalization to all companies, also including those not participating in the Polo.
- Exploitation of research and development results.This activity fosters the commercial improvement of research results developed by Pole member companies. Within this activities are included also the intellectual property management and protection services, and the support for obtaining patents and creating spin-offs.
