Regional development often involves challenges that no single organization can tackle alone. Competitiveness pressures, sustainable development issues, energy transition needs, digitalization advancement, industrial renewal requirements, and RDI initiatives call for vast knowledge, resources, and capabilities distributed across various companies, public organizations, universities…

Circular economy (CE) has established itself as more than a mere environmental aspiration. For European manufacturing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), the concept is ever more closely tied to resource efficiency, competitiveness, customer expectations and regulatory requirements. (1) paved CE as a route towards more sustainable, low-carbon, resource-efficient and competitive economies.