Renewable Energy Ecosystems Financed by European Union Public Funds

Introduction

This article takes a historic view at innovation ecosystems as they have emerged since 1997. Recently, innovation ecosystems have evolved to green innovation ecosystems. The issue of managing innovation ecosystems has arisen, highlighting the activities involved in managing green ecosystems. In the past years billion Euros have been invested by the European Union to finance innovation ecosystems and define several types of them: technological transfer centers, technological and business incubators, technological information centers, liaison offices with industry. Ecosystems are pivotal to the new Horizon programme. New entities emerge to manage innovation ecosystems, which the European Union calls centers of technological transfer. One of these entities are innovation and technological transfer clusters. The goal of this article is to build theory via the activities provisioned by European funds as compatible with innovation clusters. These activities are predefined by the European Union for the entities designated to manage innovation ecosystems, which innovation ecosystems should target digitalization, health, renewable energy and intelligent buildings (Agentia pentru Dezvoltare Regionala Vest, 2022). One of these entities is the innovation cluster, which is predefined in structure on all European Union level by provisions which include funding resources and activities. European Union funded innovation clusters are predefined, identified and included in public databases (Ministerul Educatiei si Cercetarii, 2021). This article is a descriptive and analytical case study on the activities in the new management entities, as they are provisioned by European Funds and adopted by a cluster in Timisoara, Romania which is financed via these funds. The empirical data section describes and analyzes these activities based on European Union funding provisions about activities and based on their adoption and use for all management planning and analysis documents by the management cluster. The data comes from European Union funding provisions and European Union project funding call documents. The paper juxtaposes scholarly literature review about management ecosystems and the activities therein, which are deemed novel status 2012. Findings show managing ecosystems may hold predefined activities to be adopted by all such entities. They are used for project planning, financial planning and analysis, funding requests in the local innovation cluster. This offers first definitions for the activities to manage innovation ecosystems. It also shows how these activities may be used to conduct financial planning, that is forecast the net present value of discounted cash flow. Empirical findings are more advanced than theory and the case study may therefore be used to build theory based on them. The contribution to scholarly literature is to bring new theory to scientific literature and support this and further research about the activities to manage ecosystems. From a practical perspective, the article creates attention on new practices from the European Union with designated activities to be used by all European funding adepts. In one of the European Union programs, Horizon 2020, innovation ecosystems are financed billion Euros on European Union level. Knowing how to plan business based on these funding opportunities will increase enterprise adoption of these funds. The propensity to be used by practioners gives the instrumental case value of this case study.