AGORA DIH

Murcia region industrial sector and, particularly, SMEs are aware of the high need of digital transformation to maintain their competitiveness and adapt to an increasingly dynamic and global ecosystem. However, the low awareness about digital technologies, an insufficient innovation culture and the need for substantial investment represent a burden for Murcia region companies, which are micro-SMEs in a vast majority. In this sense, Agora EDIH is born in 2020 from the scaffold of a previous Digital Innovation Hub, the Innovation for Manufacturing in the South (I4MSOUTH) created in 2016, and a querying process within the main innovation actors in Murcia Region. Agora EDIH is composed of 6 institutions, namely 2 universities, 2 Innovation and Enterprise European Centres, a Technology Centre and the Regional Development Agency of Murcia, which are the critical players to develop the key enabling technologies of Agora EDIH, Cybersecurity and AI, for digital transformation in Industry 4.0 within the different sectors highlighted on the Specialization Strategy of the Region (RIS3Mur). Particularly, Agora EDIH will focus on Agrofood, quality of life, driving activities and energy and sea and marine affairs. Agora EDIH will operate to support SMEs in every step of the process of acquiring new technologies needed to implement digital transformation. Besides these self-managed actions, Agora EDIH will build longstanding collaborative projects with other EDIHs to create a symbiotic environment by sharing resources, experiences and know-how and extend the services offered to their SMEs. The vision of this EDIH is that facilitating digital transformation of companies in RIS3Mur prioritized sectors and activities, will contribute to productivity, new businesses models and exacerbate industrial competitiveness of Murcia region.