Europe’s position as an industrial key player is a strategic goal for European Commission. Since 2016, with the communication “Digitizing European Industry Reaping the full benefits of a Digital Single Market”, there are several actions started to implement it. One of the pillars of this support concerns Digital Innovation Hubs. Digital Innovation Hubs appear as a new ecosystem organization model, where companies can fully benefit from digital innovations to upgrade their products, improve their processes and adapt their business models to the digital change in any region of Europe. During the period of 2016-2018, a catalogue of Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) initiatives has been developed where regional DIHs fulfilling a set of requirements are registered and can be easily located around Europe. But a new level of interaction is necessary to build a strong Digital Economy, connecting DIHs across Europe in networks, improving cross-border collaboration, knowledge sharing and common good practices avoiding any kind of social exclusion. Specifically, DIHs must aim towards increasing manufacturing and technology readiness in all domains, especially those not adequately represented. An especially relevant technological service offered by all DIHs, is the testing and experimenting facilities. This service provides companies (and especially SMEs) the possibility to develop pilot actions and technology tests, before deploying a complete solution inside them. With this DIH support, the service offers a minimum risk for companies (in terms of economical effort and solution readiness), while preparing them to incorporate new technologies in their everyday business processes and products as well as skills for their workers.

SMART4ALL builds capacity amongst European stakeholders via the development of self-sustained, cross-border experiments that transfer knowledge and technology between academia and industry. It targets CLEC CPS and the IoT and combines a set of unique characteristics that join together under a common vision different cultures, different policies, different geographical areas, and different application domains.