Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - INCluSilver (Innovation in personalised Nutrition through Cluster cooperation in the Silver economy)

Teaser

Health is one of the most important things for human beings.We now see a rising demand in the world for healthy food products by consumers, not the least among elderly people. At the same time, we have an aging population in Europe with a rising a demand for a healthy...

Summary

Health is one of the most important things for human beings.We now see a rising demand in the world for healthy food products by consumers, not the least among elderly people. At the same time, we have an aging population in Europe with a rising a demand for a healthy lifestyle. All humans are different from each other and need different kind of food to stay healthy. This is called personal nutrition. It is based on the fact that individuals respond differently to various food depending on their physical/ genetic structure. Thus, individuals may experience more or less benefit/ risk associated with particular dietary components. Personalised Nutrition offers a new approach for helping citizens to adjust their dietary behavior via suggestions on food choices and eating patterns that fit their individual needs and are in line with personal preferences. The problem is that there is a lack of products that promote elderly to eat according to their personal nutrition needs. The lacking products may be food products, IT services like a dietist on-line, it can be experiences that creates appetite and so on and forth. This is a so-called gap in the value chain in goods and services within personal nutrition to the elderly that this project INCluSilver address. This is done through supporting small and medium sized enterprises that have innovations that can fill these gaps, with new goods and services. This create a double gain for society. First by providing elderly with products that gives them personal nutrition so that they stay healthy. Secondly that some of the SME’s developing these innovations grow and employ people.

The overall objective is to support collaboration between actors within agro-food, health, creative industries and IT in order to create the right conditions for generating innovative ideas in the field of personalised nutrition for the elderly. This is done by a set of activities that together support SME’s to develop innovations.

Work performed

We began with building knowledge about the area of personal nutrition and the elderly. We did that by identifying stakeholders in the nine countries that participate in the project; Greece, Hungary, France, Denmark, Sweden, UK, Ireland, Spain and Italy. A total of 1691 stakeholders consisted of Healthcare Professionals; Elderly; Researchers and Policy Makers were identified. They answered five surveys about barriers to personalized nutrition, challenges to innovation, perceptions of personalized nutrition risks and benefits, and consumer concerns. The results were compiled in reports and sent to SME’s within Agrofood, IT, Creative Industries and Health. In this way they received knowledge and insights about problems and possibilities for innovation within personal nutrition. We recruited 20 experts and had an intensive workshop with them during two days in Ireland. The findings that were generated through this workshop were compiled in to reports that were disseminated to SME’s in all nine countries.

The next step was to communicate with SME’s to get knowledge and insights about their opportunities to create innovations and what they needed to succeed. To do that we needed to form a platform where the SME’s from the different sectors could meet and create cooperation for innovations. One of the components of this platform was a event i Budapest were SME’s participated to learn more and to share their ideas. The other meeting place were online in the form of an internet based Collaborative Virtual Environment were SME’s can meet online and create cooperation between sectors.

We then arranged systemic meetings with SME’s around one of the challenges that were identified during the stakeholder analysis and the meetings with SMEs. We call these meetings Innovation Guilds. We invited a stakeholder, one were a eldlery care home. That stakeholder presented their challenge to a group of enterprises that could provide a solution. The results were a set of specific possible solutions as innovations, that could be developed by SME’s. One challenge for the elderly was:” Why don’t I feel like eating anymore”? This topic was discussed between participating small and medium sized enterprises from Agro-Food, Health, IT and creative Industries and the elderly care home and possible solutions were the results. These possible solutions could become innovations.To support innovations, we developed a voucher scheme were Small and Medium Sized enterprise can apply for a grant to develop their idea to an innovation for personal nutrition for the elderly. They could apply for money to participate in the meeting I Budapest, to develop their innovation and to apply for patents. Two application rounds where done during these 18 months. 53 vouchers were granted to SME’s. The project supports companies that develop example; food that is easy to chew, to help you fall asleep, to measure your blood pressure after eating, to develop food from algae, to present the food in an appetizing way in elderly care homes and many more. During their development phase the project arrange a series of innovation support services were the enterprises can participate in webinars where they learn how to develop a business model, to go international, apply for funding and financing, branding and incubation. 53 SME’s has participated during the first 18 months.

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Final results

We think we really did some progress beyond the state of the art. The stakeholder analysis and the intensive expert workshop resulted in some very deep insights about the challenges and opportunities within the personal nutrition area to elderly in nine European countries. This knowledge and insights created the base for the Personal Nutrition report (can be downloaded on inclusilver.eu) that went deeper and found obvious gaps in the value chain that could benefit from innovations. We spread this knowledge to more than 1600 stakeholders, 31 SME\'s from Greece, Italy, Sweden, UK, Spain and Ireland participated in one of our two innovation events in Budapest where they received knowledge about the opportunities for innovations within personal nutrition. They later applied for vouchers from our Innovation voucher scheme to develop their innovation. Several products have been developed; a chocolate bar with lemon balm that decrease worries and make it easier to fall asleep, a healthcare solution that analyses food intake data and bodily fluids, as well as the emotional, social, and physical aspects of the user’s life to help the elderly person to make the right food choices for a healthy life, a green Burger innovative vegetable products and packaging solutions for the elderly population and many more. In total it resulted in 30 different supported projects with 51 unique SME*s receiving support We also assisted 24 unique companies to develop and scale up their innovation with the aid of financing, internationalization, incubation, development of business model and branding. We expect to support 90 unique SME\'s with the best innovations that promote health for the elderly before our project is finished and estimate that 50 of them will scale up their innovation before the projects ends. The impact for society is twofold. Firstly, the projects create a better and more healthy life for the elderly in Europe. Secondly our project promotes scaling up SME\'s to grow with their innovation and develop economic growth.

Website & more info

More info: https://www.inclusilver.eu.