Serbia Innovates Progress Report 3 2021

The project will recognize Serbia's most promising domains of innovation and enable the formation of the first Serbian supercluster in this field, as a top-level innovation ecosystem and globally proven model providing a systematic approach in overcoming institutional, financial, and organizational barriers in the development of innovative solutions within the Serbian economy. The activity will partner with private, public, and financial institutions, the Serbian education system, business associations, and a variety of other service providers, in order to create a support system for innovative business initiatives. Its supercluster model, as a globally proven methodology, represents an effective platform for promoting and enforcing innovation development, building innovation-friendly environments, and providing adequate institutional support and sufficient financing. The project will increase collaboration among key stakeholders in the selected domain, leading to the expansion of innovation value chains in the domain and creating synergies that will lead to the emergence of adequate financing options for innovative companies in the early stage of their development. The project will address five growth obstacles directly affecting the knowledge economy: low connectivity density and low collaboration among innovation and economy's key stakeholders in Serbia, short innovation value chains, lack of cooperation between innovative and traditional companies, lack of cooperation between innovative companies and financial institutions, and lack of financing options for innovative companies in the early stage of development. To overcome these obstacles, the project will establish a supercluster by detecting four most prominent domains, testing their potential in a real environment through four separate supercluster pilots, selecting the most prominent domain, and scaling it up by engaging additional stakeholders. The development of the first Serbian supercluster will intensify collaboration between key stakeholders, resulting in a higher number of Serbian innovative companies in the domain, more made-in-Serbia innovations, more traditional companies buying innovative solutions, more complete value chains, forming of specialized hubs, more talent, companies, and experts drawn to Serbia, and constant creation of new collaborations between traditional corporations, SMEs, and start-ups. This progress report covers all activities performed in the period of the third project quarter (1st of July to 30th of September). The report refers to the Y1 Annual Working Plan, where essential technical and operational tasks are organized per following sections: preparation activities, activity stream 1 - identification of four competitive domains, activity stream 2 - preparation for supercluster piloting, activity stream 3 - access to finance, and outreach and communication. The initial list of ten most promising domains in the Serbian economy in terms of economic potential, innovation, and spillover effect has been concluded. The list constitutes a part of the survey with 1000 selected actors that make a core of the innovation ecosystem in Serbia. The domains include new age tech solutions in personalized medicine, value-added food, high-tech agriculture, clean and green tech for sustainable development, industry 4.0, smart mobility, electronics and optics, smart living and working environment, gaming and virtual reality, and advanced business solutions and fintech. Memorandum of Understanding with Telekom Srbija has been signed, establishing cooperation with TS Ventures to support the establishment of the first VC Fund in Serbia. An expert on supercluster methodology has been identified, Christian Rangen, Global Cluster Expert from Strategy tools, who will bring additional value to the project implementation, establishment, and management of supercluster and build the competences and expertise of project team members. Serbia Innovates has presented the project at the Belgrade Venture Forum and Webiz Conference, establishing cooperation and support to two start-ups, Tapni and Baby FM.