InnoWood
Connecting small and medium-sized businesses in the wood and furniture industry.
New applications
InnoWood prepares the ground for cross-border success
As a multi-country Interreg project, InnoWood facilitates the networking of small and medium-sized enterprises from the timber and furniture industry along the border between Austria and Hungary. It aims to boost their ability to compete and encourage the focused exchange of knowledge, which contributes to the development of innovations revolving around design and interiors.
With specific measures, e.g. organising a study trip to the Milan furniture show, InnoWood significantly helps to strengthen the innovative force of Styria.
Initial situation
The timber and furniture industry plays a key role in the western trans-Danube region, the south of Burgenland and Eastern Styria.
The SMEs in this sector are however reluctant to make use of new technology and innovations, and their willingness to cooperate with other companies and organisations tends be low.
The problem
The reluctance to innovate is due to a lack of management strategies, the change between generations and ignorance of market-specific facts. At the same time new expectations on the part of customers call for the launch of new products in international market places.
Objectives
- To explore the potential of cross-border cooperation
- To transfer knowledge
- To develop innovative niche products
- To develop a digital networking platform
- To provide the technical environment for the networking platform
Activities to date:
- Study trip to Hungary and attendance at study day in Sopron
- Organisation of a study trip to Milan
- Organisation of a study trip to Upper Austria
- Organisation of furniture / timber construction Innovation Camp
- Attendance of Klagenfurt wood fair
- Cluster matching: PANFA & Holzcluster Steiermark
- Continuous further development of holznetzwerk.eu platform
- Guest appearance by Stora Enso and Graz University of Technology at Sopron Innovationscamp
- Global and regional megatrends and their impact on the wood and furniture industry (analysis, workshops, design competitions)
- Requirement assessments and prototypical implementation of a digital networking platform
Digital platform for companies from the forestry and timber industry
Online mail ordering, cloud offerings and multi-vendor sales platforms such as Amazon are currently booming throughout the world. Being found on the Internet, a professional web presence and a prompt response to new channels often constitute a huge drain on resources.
But such one-off investment is by no means all that’s needed here. The priority for us in the framework of the InnoWood project is to develop a basic system that is perfectly tailored to operational requirements and can be made available to more than one company. We are currently working on a prototypical platform application that will offer a forum to our partner firms.
Project consortium
- Holzcluster Steiermark
- Effix-Marketing Kft.
- IITF Institute for Innovation and Trend Research
- University of Applied Sciences Burgenland
Christian Tippelreither, Holzcluster Steiermark
“Thanks to our activities in the framework of InnoWood we have soon been able to achieve important successes for Styria as a centre of business.”
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