Solent conference reviews ways to promote maritime dual use technologies
06 April 2017
ENDR team
Marine Southeast, the Solent region-based cluster, and the Commission jointly hosted ENDR’s second conference on 4 April in Southampton. Focused on marine and maritime-based technologies, more than 100 participants – from across Europe and North America – reviewed the full array of options for promoting public-private collaboration for innovation, job creation and exports.
There was special emphasis on how to spin out and spin in technologies from Europe’s defence sector to and from the commercial sector. For example, officials from the UK’s “Defence and Security Accelerator” – launched in December 2016 by its Ministry of Defence – explained how the new entity is reaching out quickly to industry to identify the security and defence solutions the government needs.
“We offer a simple and straightforward way to bring your ideas to the UK’s defence and security customers: funding to develop, experiment and prove your concept, and access to our facilities for purposes of demonstration,” Lucy Mason, the Accelerator’s incoming director, told the event. “There will be no long applications, no wasted meetings and no questions over who owns the idea.”
Other speakers focused on ways to create “clusters of clusters” and other novel approaches for amplifying the ability of different regional organisations and clusters to work together and, above all, to provide the right match-making for technology companies seeking other partners.
For details about the event and its agenda see:
Solent conference
