Food-scalEUp: expanding the European digital agri-food acceleration ecosystem

Food_scalEUp is a collaborative project involving 10 organisations covering 11 regions (5 emerging & moderate innovator regions and 6 leader and strong innovator regions, according to the Regional Innovation Scoreboard) in 5 countries. The project long-term vision is to foster the capacity of European regional agri-food digital innovation ecosystems, especially in “emerging” and “moderate” innovator regions, to be more:•connected among their regional stakeholders but also with other European regional ecosystems; thus, advancing towards a European acceleration ecosystem;•effective, by fostering the successful scaling-up of technology start-ups and SMEs;•impactful, in terms of fostering the digital and green transition of the food industry;•resilient; thus, still effective under crisis and highly changing conditions; and •internationally recognised by and attractive for companies from other countries.More specifically, the mission of Food_scalEUp project is to: (i) develop higher quality business acceleration services in agri-food digital innovation ecosystems of emerging and moderate innovator regions; (ii) expand the connections, knowledge exchange, collaboration at regional, European and international level, between key people representing the different actors of the agri-food digital innovation ecosystems involved in the project; and (iii) balance the scaling-up of start-ups and SMEs and the creation of local high-value added jobs in the European regions involved in the project, by balancing the capacity of agri-food digital innovation and acceleration ecosystems in those regions.