Basque Digital Innovation Hub (BDIH)

Overview

The Basque Digital Innovation Hub (BDIH) is a non-profit initiative that responds to the Basque Smart Specialisation Strategy (RIS3) to support businesses in experimenting with digital and sustainable innovations.

Its main objective is to provide the Basque industry, particularly its SMEs, with easy and cost-efficient access to the Basque network of excellent, innovative scientific-technological assets and capabilities to advance from an efficient and socially sustainable way towards digitalisation.

The BDIH is structured as a public-private collaboration network composed of more than 30 organisations of the Basque Science, Technology and Innovation Network (universities, technology centres, advanced vocational training centres and business R&D units) and of strategic business partners.

These organisations are united in the form of a consortium, which provides services to the industrial ecosystem, especially SMEs, by connecting their resources (infrastructures, laboratories, equipment, software) and scientific-technological capabilities (people) around the priorities of the smart specialisation strategy (S3) of the Basque Country. The hub is co-owned by R+D Centers, Vocational Training Centers, Universities and Business R&D units and is supported by regional public institutions.

Currently, the technology services are structured around 8 nodes:

Flexible robotics
Additive Manufacturing
Cybersecurity
Advanced Materials
Digital electrical networks
Medical devices and digital health
Smart and Connected Machines
Data Driven Solutions

These nodes are work areas in which the BDIH organises the partners’ knowledge and technology.

Around these nodes, the BDIH has several strategic partners who support the Basque industry by providing a range of complementary services to train and develop skills, to provide support to find investments and to develop the innovation ecosystem and networking.

Test before invest

Technical and economic advice
Prototype and pilot development
Technology transfer

Skills and training

Awareness-raising events and videos
Training workshops
Training courses

Support to find investment

Partner search to access funding
Funding search

Innovation ecosystem and networking

Networking events
Signposting to commercial suppliers
Demonstrations and use cases
European partnerships

Link to national or regional initiatives for digitising industry

Smart Industry Strategy 

The Basque Region reviewed its RIS3 Smart Specialisation Strategy in 2020 which addresses areas of productive specialisation within the industrial network and technological capabilities of the Basque Country.

The Basque Digital Innovation Hub is one of the three Strategic Initiatives designed and implemented in the framework of this Smart Industry Regional Strategy.

National Working Group of Digital Innovation Hubs

The BDIH is also connected at national level as a member of the Working Group of Digital Innovation Hubs that the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government has promoted in the framework of its Connected Industry 4.0 Strategy (http://www.industriaconectada40.gob.es/Paginas/index.aspx ).

The objective of this national working group is to promote collaborative actions
interhub and to develop a complete portfolio of
services of the Spanish hubs.

European ecosystem connections

The BDIH is integrated into an exceptionally rich ecosystem, as highlighted by the broad panel of strategic partners or the links to other initiatives detailed below, in which the BDIH and its members are actively involved:

DIHNET.eu and I4MSGO
AIOTI CID Network
DIGIFED, AI REGIO and MIDIH
VANGUARD INITIATIVE
VARIOUS PARTNERSHIPS OF S3

In addition, the BDIH is actively collaborating with other (E)DIHs to enhance and maximise the capacities of the various industrial, economic and social Basque sectors.

 

 

  Digital technologies.