iBlue

Project „iBlue – Investing in sustainable blue growth and competitiveness through 3-Pillar Business Model“ is co-financed  by INTERREG MED  transnational programme which supports sharing of experiences, knowledge and improvement of public policies between national, regional and local authorities and other territorial actors of the MED area eligible regions. The main objective of the Interreg MED Programme is to promote sustainable growth in the Mediterranean area by fostering innovative concepts and practices and a reasonable use of resources and by supporting social integration through an integrated and territorially based cooperation approach. It includes 57 regions from 10 different EU countries (Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, United Kingdom – Gibraltar and Croatia) and 3 candidate countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro).

iBlue will contribute to the sustainable relaunch of yachting sector (shipbuilding, nautical services, tourism) creating a Med transnational network to help the economic upturn by sharing business models (BM) which integrate the 3 pillars of sustainability (environmental, social, economic), developing the “3-PBM” methodology.

The transnational network will involve all the segments of the yachting sector, providing a critical mass of knowledge in terms of best practices, innovation patterns and policies indicators. The creation of a yachting cluster will be a benefit and unique chance for each region’s yachting sector to expand its activity in the Med basin.

Project objective: the main objective of iBlue project is to improve Med area yachting sector competitiveness by:

1. creating an integrated and transnational network of yachting sector of the MED area
2. developing and applying a methodology for BMI of its actors, based the 3-pillars of sustainability (economic, social and environmental) and
3. providing a critical mass of knowledge about the sector.

Project results:

1. Improvement of competitiveness of yachting sector thanks to the application of a sustainable and innovative Business Model
2. Complete knowledge of the yachting segment by a systematic data organization and mapping
3. the creation of a Med yachting cluster, which will contribute to the innovation development of the Med area
4. to develop a set of sustainability performance indicators (effectiveness, efficiency and performance)

Activities:

• Studying – activity will start with a state of the art analysis about methodologies, models, approaches and tools of Business Model Innovation (hereinafter BMI); will collect and catalogue best practices cases of BMI in yachting sector, which will be exploitable for the improvement of yachting SMEs performance during pilot actions and also beyond the project duration; the aim is to understand BM specific characteristic and understand which ones would be the most useful for our specific purpose.
• Testing – to test 3-PBM methodology through pilot actions, in order to collect information about context and possible approaches for its application, strengths, weaknesses and possible refinements; We expect to conduct at least one pilot action per country.
• Transferring – to transfer the 3-PBM methodology, once tested and refined, through training and networking activities that will involve actors from the whole yachting sector of the Med area; iBlue project will create a transnational collaborative network involving all the stakeholders (SMEs, policy makers, researchers, maritime tourists,…) of the yachting sector.

Partners:

University of Udine (Italy)

STEP RI Ltd. Rijeka (Croatia)

Groupe Kedge Business School (France)

Official Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Shipping of Seville (Spain)

Cyprus Chamber Of Commerce And Industry (Cyprus)

Lasithi Chamber Of Commerce (Greece)

University of Primorska (Slovenia)

RCDI – Development and Innovation Network (Portugal)

Durres Chamber Of Commerce And Industry (Albania)

Associated partners:

University of Rijeka, Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management (Croatia)

Tourist and Economic Promotion Development (Spain)

Duration: 36 months (01.02.2017. – 31.01.2020.)

Funding programme: Interreg MED Programme

Project total budget: 2.252.855,00 €

ERDF funding (85%): 1.914.926,75 €

STEP RI Budget: 190.000,00 €

Official web page: https://iblue.interreg-med.eu/

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/iBLUEproject/