EUROPETOUR: Training modules co-developed by a European team of experts

Posted on August 30, 2018 by Angela Ivanova in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

INI-Novation Bulgaria committed to training in cultural tourism in Bulgaria:

In cooperation between INI-Novation and 15 European experts, nine training units for providers of cultural tourism products and services in rural areas were created. Herewith, the European initiative EUROPETOUR supports the economic development of rural cultural tourism.

Over the past three years, the EUROPETOUR initiative has developed a modular training programme for cultural and touristic actors and institutions in rural areas in order to meet the needs and wishes of guests interested in culture even better and to make better use of the opportunities offered by social media. It is about destination characterization, development and positioning of touristic products and services, marketing strategy and planning, distribution and sales channels, communication strategy and planning, networking and cooperation, financial planning, development of a business plan.

The training modules are available free of charge in German, English, Spanish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Italian and Polish at www.europetour.tips and are already being successfully used for training in eight European regions.

Social media as a focal point of training in cultural tourism

Separate “Guidelines for Social Media in Rural Cultural Tourism” provide practical tips for the successful use of social media in rural cultural tourism and evaluate success factors of already existing good examples from all over Europe. For INI-Novation, this guide is particularly important: “The social media in particular can be of great help in attracting and satisfying guests, but we need in-depth knowledge for professional use, which EUROPETOUR now provides us with”.

Training modules for the European tourism market

In addition to INI-Novation Bulgaria, the European regions and countries Bukovina (Romania), Heilbronner Land (Germany), Cantabria (Spain), the Marche (Italy) and the Europe-wide network “Future for Religious Heritage”, the German cultural tourism network KIRA for Heilbronn-Franken, the German-Polish network “Klosterland” and the Austrian network “Kreativ Reisen Österreich” contributed to the development.

INI-Novation Bulgaria is proud to have participated in the development of the training units, “because we were able to bring in experience from our background as business developers and marketing expetrs and thus ensure that the training units start exactly where is need further training and can immediately apply it in practice,” says Angela Ivanova, project manager for Bulgaria.

The EUROPETOUR initiative has now been awarded the European Heritage Year Label by the European Commission – an award for projects promoting the preservation of cultural heritage. “We are of course particularly proud of this sign of European appreciation for our region”, says Angela Ivanova.

For further information:

Angela Ivanova, EUROPETOUR project manager for Bulgaria

Email: angela.ivanova@ini-novation.com

EUROPETOUR team with Angela Ivanova INI-Novation Bulgaria OOD

Leading Living Labs share know-how and expertise in AHA domain and agile development

Posted on February 24, 2018 by Angela Ivanova in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Thessaloniki Active and Healthy Ageing Living Lab (Thess-AHALL), PAsteur Innovative Living Lab Of Nice (PAILLON 2020), LicaLab and ICT Usage Lab (Inria) participated in a workshop on “The impacts of living labs in agile development in the Active and Healthy Ageing domain”, organized by CAPTAIN H2020 project, France/Francophonie Living Labs, EnoLL(Health Expert Group) and hosted by Nively SAS and 27 Delvalle, held on Friday, 8 February 2018 in Nice.

The main objective of the workshop was to present core living lab projects, as well as, to promote the exchange of knowledge and experience among participants –stakeholders, living lab managers, and other interested parts- on agile methodologies, which are applied on concrete living labs, in their daily operational tasks from the requirements elicitation to product/service development. In an open discussion, all attendants had the opportunity to describe the impacts of the living labs in fulfilling the needs of companies for agile development in general but mainly in Active and Healthy Ageing (AHA) domain, except for sharing their own experiences in any of the methods used in a Living Lab project.

It is known that many traditional project teams and companies run into trouble when they try to define all of the requirements up front. Agile development enables the practitioners to elicit detailed requirements up front, while then they can also do the same when they actually need the information. It is particularly true for project and products in the healthcare domain, which investigate new ICT approaches aiming at a proof of concept or MVP (Minimum Viable Product), investment in detailed requirements documents early in the project which could be wasted when the requirements inevitably change (pivot), should be avoided. Therefore, the methodologies used in living labs based on user engagement, continuous feedback or continuous data collection, etc. throughout the project’s or product’s life-cycle seem to efficiently support agile development.

After the completion of the presentations, the participating Living Lab representatives had the opportunity to run an effective discussion on the future actions and roadmap on agile development and the relevant living lab project methodologies. All participants expressed their satisfaction for the useful outcomes that emerged from the workshop, regarding the crucial role of living labs on the AHA domain and renewed their appointment for a “follow-up” meeting in the future,which will bring even more ideas and new perspectives for further development, new partnerships and exchange of know-how.

Source: http://captain-eu.org/blog/leading-living-labs-share-know-how-and-expertise-aha-domain-and-agile-development

Wissenstransfer auf digitalen Plattformen: Community-Building als Erfolgsfaktor

Posted on February 9, 2018 by Angela Ivanova in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Welche Methoden sind geeignet, eine digitale Plattform zum Austausch von Fallstudien nachhaltig zu platzieren? Wie können Nutzer motiviert werden, die Ergebnisse im Sinne einer Knowledge Co-Creation weiterzuentwickeln? Und wie können über solche Plattformen wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse breit gestreut werden? Im Kontext der Geographic Information Science and Technology befasste sich unter Leitung von Prof. Dr. Carsten Reuter eine dreiköpfige studentische Projektgruppe der Hochschule Aschaffenburg drei Monate lang mit dieser Fragestellung.

Praxispartner im Projekt war die INI-Novation GmbH in Mühltal bei Darmstadt. Mit der auf Innovationsmanagement spezialisierten Unternehmensberatung hat die Hochschule Aschaffenburg bereits mehrere studentische Projekte erfolgreich durchgeführt. Anlass für das aktuelle Projekt war, dass INI-Novation für das vom EU-Programm ERASMUS geförderte Projekt giCASES Ansätze für einen nachhaltigen Betrieb entwickeln möchte, um nach Auslaufen der Förderphase nachhaltig erfolgreich zu sein. Die international besetzte Studentengruppe (ein Projektmitglied stammt aus den Niederlanden) wertete hierzu zahlreiche Quellen aus und setzte unter anderem Methoden wie Balanced Scorecard und Marktsegmentierung ein.

Erfolgreiche Zusammenarbeit fortgesetzt

„Die Studierenden konnten eindrucksvoll belegen, dass unser bisheriger Weg, den Wissenstransfer in den Vordergrund zu stellen, nur ein Teil der Lösung ist. Mindestens genauso wichtig ist für den erfolgreichen Betrieb dieser Plattformen die Bildung und Bindung einer Community, die aktiv das Thema mitgestaltet. Der unverfälschte Blick der Studierenden auf die Thematik hat unsere Perspektive erweitert “, schwärmt Dr. Wolfgang Kniejski von INI-Novation. Seine Kollegin und Projektleiterin Angela Ivanova ergänzt: „Die vielen analysierten Praxisbeispiele von Plattformen ganz anderer Art helfen uns, Mehrwerte für die Nutzer besser zu erkennen, zu verstehen und auf giCASES zu übertragen. Dies führt mittelfristig zu einer Qualifizierung dringend benötigter Fachkräfte und unterstützt die digital Transformation beim praktischen Einsatz geographischer Informationssysteme.“

Feierliche Zertifikatübergabe

Die Vertreter der INI-Novation betonten, dass die erarbeiteten Ansätze das Projekt sicher weiter bringen würden. Als Dankeschön für die geleistete Arbeit überreichte Frau Ivanova daher am 1. Februar ein Zertifikat an die Studentengruppe.

Background information

Das Information Management Institut (IMI) wurde zu Beginn des Jahres 2011 gegründet und ist eine wissenschaftlich-akademische Einrichtung der Fakultät Wirtschaft und Recht an der Hochschule Aschaffenburg. Das IMI betreibt Arbeiten und Projekte der Angewandten Forschung und des Wissenstransfers auf dem Gebiet der Wirtschaftsinformatik (engl.: Information Management). Die im IMI vertretenen akademischen Themen entsprechen weitgehend den Lehrgebieten der im Institut tätigen Professoren. Weiter sind die Veröffentlichung wissenschaftlicher Schriften, die Veranstaltung von Vortragsreihen und Tagungen sowie die generelle Förderung des Offenen Akademischen Diskurses Aufgaben des IMI. Für weitere Informationen siehe http://www.imi.bayern.

INI-Novation GmbH provides leading edge expertise in the creation of new business development and strong expertise in innovation management. INI-Novation serves as a specialist in transfers of technologies with practical experience in innovation finances and capital raising for SMEs as well as in development of training sessions.

INI-Novation drives the strategy of UNCAP’s commercialization

Posted on July 5, 2017 by Angela Ivanova in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The next UNCAP project meeting was held in Thessaloniki, Greece, from the 26th to the 27th of June 2017.

25 partners get together in this beautiful summer city to discuss the wrap up the UNCAP activities and to look beyond into the future.

The project is entering its final phase, in which the most important goals фор the partners are to complete the commercialization strategy of of the new technology and to approve the first steps of its market entry.

INI-Novation as the business partner of the UNCAP project, presented the main important points from the business plan for discussion and as well the possible innovation transfer models that can pave the way for future exploitation activities.

INI-Novation Bulgaria is a host of training sessions for cultural tourism start-ups

Posted on April 7, 2017 by Angela Ivanova in Start-ups | Leave a comment

The city of Veliko Tarnovo, a hotbed for cultural traditions & crafts production in north central Bulgaria, hosted the training session, organized by INI-Novation Bulgaria, as part of the International Tourism Fair “Cultural Tourism”.

This event proved to be a great success: representatives from municipalities, art organisations, tourism agencies and single start-ups showed a lot of interest in the presentations of EUROPETOUR partners Karin Drda-Kühn (Kultur und Arbeit e.V., Germany), Angela Ivanova (INI-Novation), Wolfgang Kniejski (INI-Novation), Lacramioara Beilic (Bucovina Tourism, Romania) and Antonio Kuzmanovski (Macedonian start-up “WheninX“).

THE MULTIPLIER EVENT

After an introduction about the vision of EUROPETOUR by Karin Drda-Kühn (Kultur und Arbeit e.V., Germany), Angela Ivanova (INI-Novation Bulgaria) presented the EUROPETOUR training modules and one of the main topics of interest for the Bulgarian tourism stakeholders and mainly startups in tourism: Positioning, branding, marketing of cultural tourism in rural areas and the importance of networking. Her presentation was built on so called case-based learning: By providing a best practice example surrounded by theoretical knowledge and practical exercises, a better understanding about the specifics of the topic was achieved.

After that, Lacramioara Beilic (Bucovina Tourism, Romania) presented the region of Bucovina as a best practice example and opportunity for collaboration between Bulgarian and Romanian stakeholders. She highlight her “vision for networking”, sharing what the Bucovina region did for addressing the specific needs of cultural travellers in a successful way.

Wolfgang Kniejski (INI-Novation Bulgaria) gave a deep overview of financing instruments with special emphasis on topics such as value generation chains in cultural tourism, business planning, sales and distribution, as well as market-oriented financing. Best practise examples were provided and many insides about how to build a successful project idea were discussed.

At the end, a best practice presentation about distribution policies from Macedonia complemented the event. Antonio Kuzmanovski, CEO of the Macedonian start-up “WheninX“, presented a service-driven technological solution for fostering cultural programmes for locals and visitors.

UNCAP @ OGC Health Summit in Dublin

UNCAP partners and business development experts in Dublin

The UNCAP project has attended the OGC Health Summit in Dublin on the 21st of June, 2016, with presentations and a showcase, which has been held after the summit, presenting the various UNCAP technologies.

Also, the annual UNCAP Challenge has been held, and this year it has been awarded to the Italian startup company Chino.io.

Someone had said that the goal of real healthcare reform must be high-quality, universal coverage in a cost-effective way. The UNCAP consortium is driving the project success into exactly this direction. Short before the finalization of the UNCAP Box prototype, the IPR issues together with standardization are coming into the UNCAP’s agenda.

Wolfgang Kniejski (EIT Digital) presenting service delivery models on the OGS eHealth Summit

The European countries strive to provide economical health care to an increasingly aging population; and people want to stay active and healthy in their own homes as long as possible. Therefore, the market potential of UNCAP is huge, keeping in mind that the UNCAP technologies shall satisfy that social needs. Together with these opportunities, there are also obstacles in front of our success. One of the main obstacle for market take-up of the UNCAP results is the standardization. Therefore, the participation in the OGC eHealth Summit with presentations displaying the various UNCAP technologies as well as service delivery models and interoperability requirements was an important step for UNCAP to start serious dialog with representatives of standardization bodies and organizations.

INI-Novation is the responsible partner for the market take-up of the project’s results but also for providing solutions in the area of IPR and standardization. Wolfgang Kniejski present the vision for the business development of eCare technologies, and the important impact that standardization has for the future project’s sustainability. The UNCAP partners participated in the OGC Health Domain Working Group. The group enables OGC to identify and work with a representative group of market participants in the identification and prioritization of use cases, business and technical requirements that will provide the most significant value, or mitigate the most significant risks in this arena. Through efforts to identify requirements, gaps in standards and opportunities for demonstration, the Health Domain Working Group contributes to development of open mapping standards in support of health marketplace requirements.

Co-creation of knowledge: lessons learned and the giCASES approach

Posted on June 18, 2016 by Angela Ivanova in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Image: © INI-Novation GmbH – Como, 2016

The giCASES project is a “Knowledge Alliance” financed under the European ERASMUS+ program. The giCASES project will develop new methods for co-creation of knowledge, where industrial partners and universities will jointly develop new case based learning material. On 7 June 2016, the first giCases Dissemination Seminar was organised in Como (Italy) by our Italian partner Politecnico di Milano. (Source: www.gicases.eu)

The goal of the seminar, named “Co-creation of knowledge: lessons learned and the giCASES approach“, is to stimulate the discussion and exchange experiences on the co-creation of knowledge process. The seminar program included the presentation of some initiatives already implemented in the field of co-creation of knowledge and introduces the case studies that will be developed by the giCASES project.

Currently, INI-Novation is involved as a partner to support the implementation and exploitation of the final project results.

UNCAP Consortium meets in Lund

Posted on May 15, 2016 by Angela Ivanova in eCare, eCare, eCare, eCare | Leave a comment

May 2016 started inspiring with a Nordic flair. The UNCAP Consortium gathered in Lund (Sweden) for a two days project meeting. The meeting was important for all technical partners because of the finalization of the UNCAP Box prototype. Even more, the IPR issues were coming into the agenda. INI-Novation is the responsible partner for the market take-up of the project’s results but also for providing solutions in the area of IPR and licensing.

In Lund, the attention of the consortium was on the technical implementation of the UNCAP Box. The whole team of technical experts, members of the consortium, attended the meeting. The discussion was quite intensive because of the importance to finalize the prototype. It has to be entered for a pilot testing in the second half of 2016.

At that period, all UNCAP pilots, consisting mainly of care centers, care homes and hospices from all over Europe, have to implement the UNCAP box in their activities and introduce the system to their patients and their relatives.

The technical team of UNCAP at the meeting in Lund

Then, the second part of the UNCAP project will start with analyzing the impact from different perspectives: care improvement, life style and financial benefits.

In this regard, the consortium discussed several items very relevant for the market uptake: marketing research – analysis and studies in the field of e-Health and e-Care about user behavior and user needs.

The INI-Novation team at the right discussing the further steps (Lund, 2016)

Angela Ivanova (INI) discussed the progress of the impact analysis on Business and Financial Models and presented INI’s progress report “Exploitation and market replication”.

One of the main discussed topics were the process chain analysis of the UNCAP products that INI has already identified in its analysis work. A snapshot of market research findings was presented and the criteria of user acceptance were discussed. The topic is directly related with the technical implementation of the UNCAP Box and is complementing the work of the technicians to set-up the UNCAP product at the very begging with the possible desired functions or possible user training.

After two intensive working days, our host and partner from Sweden has organized an intensive and interesting sightseeing in Lund. It is always wonderful when we have time in addition to the project meetings to enjoy also the place where we are!

EUROPETOUR consortium in Lund. (May 2016)

UNCAP consortium in Lund

University building in Lund

INI Team in front of a typical old-style Swedish building in Lund.

INI-Novation’s team in front of a typical old-style Swedish building in Lund

EUROPETOUR – new training for cultural tourism in rural areas

Posted on March 23, 2016 by Angela Ivanova in Tourism, Tourism, Tourism, Training, Training, Training | Leave a comment

A young girl by cell phone photographed of The smallest cathedral in the world, church of the Holy cross, Nin, Croatia

Being successful in cultural tourism needs training for cultural workers, tourism experts, business developers and representatives of public authorities. In urban areas there already are numerous examples for successful cooperation, but good practice in rural areas is rather rare. Specifically, training is needed in professionally using social media and online marketing of tourism services. Identifying the actual training needs is one of the objectives of EUROPETOUR and developing a detailed training program accordingly. EUROPETOUR will be implemented until 2018 in eight European regions, supported by the European ERASMUS+ programme.

First of all, the project partners aim at identifying the necessary steps for successful cultural tourism development in rural areas. In a second step, training modules for local stakeholders wishing to develop or foster their own skills are established, including guidelines for the use of social media as well as online marketing in cultural heritage, and cultural tourism. The guidelines will be available in seven European languages in order to get European outreach.

European travellers on their way to discover cultural heritage

Additionally, all project partners to EUROPETOUR have committed to developing networked, tangible offers and ready-made packages across Europe. In this way, travellers with a special interest in, say, castles and monasteries or creative travel, should end up with a tailor-made travel arrangement allowing them to explore the Italian region Marke, the Spanish region Cantabria or the German region of the Heilbronner Land in a similar way. Opportunities provided by social media as well as the use of mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets, are to be directly addressed. The goal is to generate income for cultural tourism stakeholders, to develop attractive packages for cultural travellers and to benefit from the best-practice examples demonstrated by the project partners across Europe.

Participating partners and cultural touristic networks

Kultur und Arbeit e.V. with the KIRA-network of Heilbronn-Franken region (coordinator), Germany
Future for Religious Heritage, Belgium
Klosterland Netzwerk / Municipality of Mysliborz, Poland
Kreativ Reisen Austria
Bucovina Tourism, Romania
Touristikgemeinschaft HeilbronnerLand e.V., Germany
Marke region, Italy
SRECD – Cantabria region, Spain
E-C-C Verein für interdisziplinäre Bildung und Beratung, Austria
INI-Novation, Bulgaria

Contacts:

Project coordinator: Karin Drda-Kuehn, info@europetour.tips(link sends e-mail), phone 0049 7931 56 36 374

Project manager for Bulgaria: Angela Ivanova, angela.ivanova@ini-novation.com, phone 0049 1521 72 90 945, or 00359 885 128 877

Web-page EUROPETOUR: https://www.europetour.tips/

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/epale/de/node/17663

Participate in the giCASES survey on collaboration in GIS&T education

Posted on March 23, 2016 by Angela Ivanova in GIS, GIS, GIS, Projects, Projects, Projects, Projects, Projects, Projects, Projects, Projects, Projects, Projects, Surveys | Leave a comment

03/23/2016

INI-Novation is a partner in the European project named giCases, and we kindly ask you to participate in the giCASES survey on collaboration in GIS&T education.

The European giCASES project is investigating how higher education institutions are working together with private companies and public administrations in the design and delivery of GIS&T education in Europe. Therefore, giCASES would like to invite individuals and organizations from the higher education sector but also from the public and private sector to participate in a survey on collaboration between higher education institutions and other stakeholders in the design and delivery of GIS&T education.

This short survey is a unique opportunity for teachers, program coordinators but also GI professionals in the private or public sector to share their experiences with and views on collaboration in GIS&T education. In addition, the survey also aims to collect good practices in collaboration between higher education institutions and other stakeholders in the design and delivery of GIS&T education.

The survey can be accessed here.

giCASES is a Knowledge Alliance project under the Erasmus+ programme of the European Commission. The project aims to enable and strengthen innovation in GIS&T education and practice, and facilitate the collaborative creation, management and sharing of knowledge between different stakeholders. The giCASES project will develop and test new, innovative and multidisciplinary approaches to teaching, learning and knowledge management in the area of GIS&T.

The survey is the first step in the project, and will help the project partners to better understand current ways of collaboration in GIS&T education and the needs and expectations of different stakeholders regarding this collaboration. Should you have any comments or questions regarding this survey, please feel free to contact the survey organizers.

Thank you in advance for your participation! We appreciate your time and valuable input.

The giCASES consortium.