The so-called “traditional sectors” of the blue economy (fisheries, aquaculture, and nautical services) have always formed the backbone of the blue economy in the EU.

However, many of these sectors are currently facing numerous challenges due to a lack of innovative pathways aimed at increasing the capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the workforce in blue economy domains. This is especially true for certain maritime areas and SMEs, remote from innovation hubs, where this lack prevents the development of new sustainable and smart business solutions, and where the unemployment rate remains very high.

The BLUES LINKS project aims to reverse this situation by promoting the innovation process and the S3 smart specialization of MSPs in traditional blue economy and maritime-related sectors, improving their ability to attract new qualified workforce. 

Through the necessary cross-border cooperation of development agencies, innovation centers, universities, and business support organizations, with the aim of exchanging and providing various innovative and IT solutions and mechanisms for matching supply and demand between MSEs and job seekers in the blue economy domains, the project specifically activates:

1. 1.  BLUES LINKS S3 network of innovation hubs, which supports 80 MSPs with a catalog of innovative and IT business solutions/services;
   2. Three matchmaking mechanisms, which include an online platform for MSPs and job seekers in the Blue Economy domains, three hackathons open to 154 participants, including students and MSPs, and three cross-border open job fairs. In particular, organizing hackathons to facilitate encounters between labor supply and demand in traditional Blue Economy sectors represents a new challenge in the innovation sector, creating an open space for technical and scientific comparisons between MSPs and qualified labor.