InShape development project

The Comeback Center has been accepted as a flagship company in the European development project ”Innovation ecosystems for healthy active people in Europe.”

Comeback Center & InShape

The InShape project develops European innovation clusters around the themes of sport and well-being. It involves actors from five different EU countries. The project develops innovations in sport and well-being and addresses the challenge of population immobility. The project is coordinated by Sports and Technology from the Netherlands, and from Lapland by the Comeback Center and Lapin University of Applied Sciences.

The InShape project offers us the opportunity to further improve rehabilitation and its monitoring, and to optimise the rehabilitation process to ensure the best outcome. Digital rehabilitation will play a big role in the future and will be developed during the project. Our own expertise will also become more accessible from other EU countries through an international network. By working together with actors in other regions, we can achieve growth in well-being in a wider context and learn from each other.

Project

I3-INSHAPE aims to strengthen Europe’s digital economy by developing the ClusSport partnership (recognised as an EU region of smart specialisation (S3) in sport and vitality) into a European centre of excellence for SME projects in sport and vitality/technology: the I3-INSHAPE Innovation and Investment Hub, where we will accelerate and market interregional innovation investments in sport and vitality/technology.

Project description

The project supports innovation led by mature SMEs in the commercialisation and expansion phases to exploit opportunities in this fast-growing global market. In doing so, I3-INSHAPE will help address the problem of increasing physical inactivity in the general population, which is identified as a major factor in the increase of chronic and endemic diseases in the population (such as diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease and cancer).

The approach is demand-driven. The Federation wants to combine the key challenges identified by SMEs with data-driven growth, expanding innovation and bringing it to market:

1) the lack of inter-regional linkages to expand value chains and market position;
2) digitalisation of services and products and better access to information,
3) business and innovation support: user-driven innovation, scaling up, commercialisation and access to finance.

The project will build a portfolio of interregional investment (I3) cases (TRL6-9) starting with 5 pre-selected flagship SME I3 cases(included in the partnership) and a further 30+ SME I3 cases selected during the project through a series of bottom-up OPEN INVITATIONS. These 30+ SME I3 cases will benefit from the cascade funding to respond toA) the specific needs/requests of the Flagship SME companies and B) to create a second stream of additional I3 cases, thus contributing to building inter-regional value chains around the Flagship and Second Stream I3 cases.

Finally, the project will transform the I3-INSHAPE Innovation and Investment Hub into a self-sustaining, demand-driven ecosystem that will continue beyond the lifetime of this proposal.

Union

Partners

  • Cluster Sports and Technology – CST (NL)
  • IMEC (NL)
  • InnoBeweegLab (NL)
  • European Platform for Sport Innovation – EPSI (BE)
  • LAB University of Applied Sciences (FI)
  • LADEC (FI)
  • University of Jyväskylä (FI)
  • Kainuu University – KAMK (FI)
  • Lapland University of Applied Sciences – LUAS (FI)
  • MSE Cluster Ltd (HU)
  • Universidad Europea de Valencia – UEV (ES)
  • 4ivlcesport (ES)
  • ACCIÓ (CAT)
  • INDESCAT (CAT)

Pre-selected PK flagship companies

  • ViNotions (NL)
  • CSE Entertainment (FI)
  • Comeback Center (FI)
  • Blautic Designs, SL (ES)
  • ONALABS (CAT)
Note.

Funded by the European Union. However, the views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union, the European Innovation Council or the European Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EISMEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.