The ConecTTA program is endowed with more than 200,000 euros
The Autonomous Community of the Region of Murcia is launching the 'ConecTTa' programme through the Institute for Development, an initiative designed to connect SMEs and research centres and thus promote the creation of synergies and the transfer of knowledge and technology between the business and academic and research sectors.
The programme has a budget of over 200,000 euros and is intended to finance the participation of companies in research projects, bringing companies closer to advanced innovation and increasing the number of innovative SMEs in the Region.
The director of Info, Javier Celdrán, held a working meeting today with research groups from universities and public bodies to present this programme. “The business world and the research world are not watertight compartments, but rather they have to work in a coordinated and joint manner so that the advances of our research centres result in an improvement in the competitiveness of our business and industrial fabric that allows companies to increase their sales or access new markets,” Celdrán stressed.
Specifically, the director of the regional development agency met with representatives of the Research Results Transfer Offices of the three universities in the Region, the University of Murcia, the Polytechnic University of Cartagena and the Catholic University of Murcia, as well as the Centre for Soil Science and Applied Biology of Segura (Cebas-Csic) and the Murcian Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Development (Imida).
This innovative programme aims to make companies in the region aware of the potential of research organisations that develop highly innovative projects. The initiative therefore focuses on establishing initial contact that will open the door to future collaborations that will allow the knowledge and technology of these organisations to be applied to business projects for experimental development.
Grants
In this sense, the programme places special emphasis on those companies located in sectors considered strategic for the region and which are integrated within the Research and Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialisation of the Region of Murcia (RIS3), such as the agri-food sector, the tourism sector, the energy efficiency sector or the furniture sector.
The 'ConecTTa' initiative, which includes grants of up to 8,000 euros to encourage the participation of companies in these research projects, also seeks to establish a communication channel between these two areas through a series of regular meetings in which SMEs can express their needs and learn about the research lines of these organisations.
“The regional government is fully committed to the modernisation of our economy, and this modernisation involves implementing a genuine culture of innovation in the region's companies. Measures such as the 'ConecTTa' programme are a stimulus and are added to other initiatives that reveal this commitment and are reflected in the fact that the region has been the fourth to have made the greatest investment effort in innovation and the second in which the number of personnel dedicated to research has grown the most,” concluded the director of the regional agency.
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