Innova S.p.A., established in 1993, is a private company specialised in Technology Transfer services with 4 branches in Italy (Roma, Bologna, Cosenza and Lecce) and new ventures established during the last years in Europe (France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Poland) and in the United States (Boston). The company is made up of a pool of more than 100 professional consultants and experts (60% engineers and technicians) who have developed a long standing and consolidated knowledge in areas such as RTD, evaluation and valorisation of advanced technologies, marketing activities at international level and technology transfer services. Innova actively assists and collaborates with industrial centres, research organisations and universities in the implementation of valorisation strategies regarding the assessment and exploitation of advanced technologies for an efficient product- and process management, developed in the framework of private research initiatives, R&D programmes of the European Union as well as national programmes. In the field of Technology Transfer, Innova encourages and promotes the technology transfer of new technologies and R&D project results from Universities to Industry through licensing and patent activity, IPR management. Since 1996, it has promoted more than 1500 international projects of R&S and technology transfer actions on a European scale. 25% of Italian technology transfer actions are supported by Innova.

Innova will be the technical expert in STARNETregio, taking care of the cross-regional analysis and the setting up of the Regional Research Agendas for each region regarding their RTD activities and industry needs, fundamental to the subsequent elaboration of the Shared Research Agenda and the joint Action Plan. Furthermore, Innova will set up guidelines and templates for the methodological tools to be used within the project (e.g. elaboration of the questionnaire template for gathering comparable and efficient information from the research and industrial communities; structure of the final Action Plan).

The experiences acquired through several projects and initiatives confirm Innova’s suitability and capability to accomplish the attributed project tasks in the most efficient way. Due to its great experience started in 2000, Innova has become a centre of competence for the EU benchmarking analysis and its expertise in this field has culminated in new methodology, the Innova Benchmarking Consulting Practice®. Since 1998, Innova manages the Coordination Unit of the Innovation Relay Centres (IRCs) carrying out a re-qualification activity of the IRC network, grouping 71 European Innovation Centres for innovation. Since 2004, Innova has been coordinating the IRE Secretariat, the Coordination Unit of the Innovating Regions in Europe, aiming to facilitate the exchange and the valorisation of regional experiences and innovation practices.