Innovation Zone and Strategic Hub: what is actually being built in Western Macedonia

The approval of the Living Labs is not the end of a process. It is the beginning of a bet on cooperation that the participating bodies themselves will settle.

On 21 August 2026, the Operation for the development and operation of six Living Labs and the Innovation Zone of Western Macedonia was approved under the Just Development Transition Programme 2021-2027, with a total budget of 7,000,000 euro and the Regional Development Fund of Western Macedonia as beneficiary. Behind that single line sit twelve sub-projects, five contracting beneficiaries, ten bodies in total and eight months of appraisal.

Beyond the figures, the questions that matter are different ones. What exactly is being built, why it is being built this way, and what its success will depend on.

The diagnosis: the gap was never about funding, it was about intermediation

Western Macedonia has never suffered from a shortage of programmes. It has suffered, and still suffers, from something harder to fix: the absence of intermediary structures that translate scientific knowledge into an applicable solution for a specific business, within a specific timeframe, with a measurable result. The literature calls this an absorptive capacity deficit, a concept established by Cohen and Levinthal in 1990. A small firm may well know the technology, yet lack the time, the capital or the risk tolerance to test it on its own.

Between a research result and a commercial application lies a maturity gap, roughly TRL 4 to 7, from validation in a laboratory setting to a system prototype demonstrated in an operational environment. Conventional funding instruments do not reach into it. Research funding stops earlier, investment aid starts later. In between, innovation does not die from a lack of ideas but from a lack of testing infrastructure. That gap is precisely what the Living Labs cover.

There is a second observation, equally uncomfortable. Where initiatives existed, they were scattered. Each body worked with its own logic, its own tools and its own data. The result was not zero, but it did not add up. And a region in transition cannot afford efforts that do not add up.

Innovation Zone and Strategic Hub are not the same thing

The two terms are often used interchangeably, although they do not mean the same thing, and the distinction has practical consequences.

The Strategic Hub is the wider whole, the operational framework within which the Region designs, coordinates and monitors its development ecosystem: smart specialisation strategy, business support mechanisms, data, observatories, one-stop structures. It is the way the Region thinks as a system.

The Innovation Zone is a subsystem of that framework. It is the core of the physical and institutionally established intervention, where innovation acquires infrastructure, space, equipment and operating rules. The Living Labs, in turn, are the operational core of the Zone, the point where the system touches an actual business.

If an image helps: the Strategic Hub thinks, the Innovation Zone houses, and the Living Labs do the work. Their operation is a core component of the Strategic Hub, not an annex to it. If the Labs do not deliver, the Strategic Hub remains a diagram in a slide deck.

Why Living Labs and not some other instrument

A Living Lab is neither a laboratory in the academic sense nor a business incubator. It is an open innovation methodology applied in real-life conditions, with the end user as co-creator rather than passive recipient. It operates on the quadruple helix model, bringing the scientific community, businesses, public administration and civil society to the same table. It also has a feature that sets it apart from every other instrument: experimentation happens where the problem actually exists. In a field, in a greenhouse, in an energy installation, in a building, on a lake, in a mountain settlement.

The governing principle is test before invest. The business tests before committing capital. This reduces private risk with public resources, which is, in theory and in practice, the most efficient way to mobilise private investment in an area with low risk tolerance.

The six labs were not chosen at random. They cover the sectors where Western Macedonia has both a problem and a comparative advantage: clean technologies and energy, agrifood and wine, mountain areas, lakes, resilience of critical and energy infrastructure, and smart technologies.

The architecture: why a central hub and not six parallel projects

The choice of architecture was the single most important design decision in the proposal. Six standalone labs would have been administratively simpler and operationally useless, because they would have reproduced exactly the fragmentation the Operation is meant to cure.

A hub and spoke structure was chosen. The hub, the Regional Development Fund, does not produce research. It holds four things that no one else can hold: the single entry point for requests, the common indicator system, the registry of ecosystem structures, and the interoperability of systems. The spokes, the thematic labs, produce the service where they have the expertise.

The difference is substantive. In such a system, a business in Kastoria with a food quality problem does not need to know which lab does what. It only needs to walk through one door. The principle is internationally known as no wrong door, and it is not a slogan but an operational requirement with design consequences.

Why coordination was assigned to the Regional Development Fund

Coordinating a scheme of ten bodies is not assigned on the basis of availability, but on institutional capacity and trust. Both are present, and on a better footing than in any previous period.

The Regional Development Fund of Western Macedonia now has a Directorate. Under its new internal organisation charter it acquires a distinct organisational structure, clear competences and the capacity to exercise a strategic rather than merely administrative role. In parallel, by decision of the Regional Council of Western Macedonia it has been designated coordinator of the Innovation Zone and of the Strategic Hub. That role did not emerge from this Operation, it predates it and gives it institutional grounding.

What matters most, however, is not the organisation chart but the trust of the partners. Five bodies with autonomous governance, equal institutional standing and their own priorities agreed to sign a programme agreement with the Regional Development Fund as lead partner. That is not a given in any region of the country, and it cannot be acquired by document.

Taking on coordination also entails an internal obligation. The Fund must deploy all of its staff, precisely in order to achieve better management of its own human resources, with a clear allocation of responsibilities, without overlaps and without dependence on individuals. Optimal use of personnel is not an internal organisational matter. It is the precondition for the hub to respond to twelve sub-projects simultaneously without becoming the bottleneck of the very system it coordinates.

Those staff also need to be connected, as far as possible, with the full range of structures in Western Macedonia, meaning the Regional authority services, the chambers, the research institutions, the development bodies and the business support mechanisms. A hub that is not connected is not a hub.

Who does what, and above all what each body does not do

Clarity of boundaries is a precondition for cooperation, not an obstacle to it. In the approved technical file, roles and resources are allocated as follows.

Two points are often missed. First, the Kozani Chamber and the Technical Chamber of Western Macedonia act as beneficiaries on behalf of all the commercial chambers and all the professional chambers respectively. They submit, manage and account for the sub-projects, yet the resources are distributed and the actions are implemented by all of them. Second, the amounts allocated to the chambers look small, 238,000 euro in total, or 3.4% of the Operation. They are, however, the mechanism that will determine whether the remaining 6.7 million ever reaches a recipient.

Connectivity works on four levels, not one

The word connectivity is usually understood in technical terms. In practice it operates on four distinct levels, and failure at any one of them cancels out the rest.

Institutional level. A signed programme agreement exists between all bodies, and it shields their cooperation. It defines roles, allocation of resources, deliverables, monitoring bodies and mutual obligations, with the Regional Development Fund as lead partner. It is not a declaration of intent but a text subject to pre-contractual audit by the Hellenic Court of Audit, and it is legally binding.

Operational level. Every business request receives a unique identifier, is assigned to a case manager and is routed to the appropriate provider, whether a Living Lab, a chamber or another structure, with progress tracking, action history, agreed service levels and an escalation mechanism. This is how the no wrong door principle turns from an aspiration into a procedure.

Digital level. The Living Labs Digital Portal is not a website. It is a coordination system, with booking of services and equipment, access to data, matchmaking, user management and assessment of the innovation maturity of businesses. Sub-projects 2, 6, 7, 8 and 9 have received a harmonisation certificate from the General Secretariat of Information Systems and Digital Governance, committing them to speak the language of the Greek digital state rather than one of their own.

Data and knowledge level. Common indicators, a unified methodology for valuing the service provided, a shared registry of structures, and links to the regional smart specialisation structure and to the information systems of the Region, the University and CERTH. Without this, at the end of the three years there will be six success narratives and no measurement.

The mechanism that will decide everything: the experiment cycles

The heart of the operation is not the equipment but the experiment cycles. Two are planned per year in each thematic lab, following a standard four-stage process: call, selection, experimentation, evaluation. Each open call defines the required technology readiness level on entry and, where appropriate, on exit. Participants co-design the experimental plan, gain access to equipment and data, and the cycle closes with an indicator-based evaluation and a public presentation of results.

Six labs, two cycles each, over three years of operation means thirty-six experiment cycles. The target of 88 supported businesses, of which 44 are new, works out at fewer than three businesses per cycle. This needs to be said plainly. That indicator is the compliance threshold, not the ambition. If the three years close at 88, the contract will have been honoured and the opportunity will have been lost.

Why this was an exceptionally difficult proposal

The point is made not as a complaint but as evidence of the complexity now being inherited.

A scheme of ten bodies with different legal status had to be assembled, covering private and public law entities, a university and a research centre, and mapped onto twelve sub-projects with a coherent logic. Reasonable cost and in-house implementation capacity had to be documented for each sub-project, with full cost analysis forms and technical annexes, documents that were rewritten many times before they held.

The question of overlap with other operations in the area, namely SYNERGiNN, DigiAgriFood and Smart Lab Ptolemaida 2.0, had to be answered with evidence rather than assurances, both at the level of equipment and at the level of physical scope. The role and the necessity of the participation of the commercial and professional chambers had to be substantiated, since it was not self-evident to the appraisal. State aid had to be resolved at three levels, beneficiaries, contractors and end recipients, and a de minimis attribution methodology had to be designed for services provided free of charge, under Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/2831 with its ceiling of 300,000 euro per single undertaking over three years. A harmonisation certificate had to be obtained for the digital sub-projects. And finally, the very role of the Regional Development Fund as lead beneficiary had to be established in law, on the basis of the framework governing regional development funds and programme agreements.

The file passed through a completeness checklist, two rounds of supplementary evidence, an opinion from the competent state aid unit, an appraisal sheet, a ranking table and two positive recommendations before reaching a ministerial signature. Eight months in total. This is worth recording because it explains something important. The Operation was not approved because it was easy or pleasant, but because it withstood scrutiny.

There are no magic wands

Complete honesty is required here, because overstatement is the worst ally of an undertaking like this one.

Of the 7 million euro, roughly 4.4 million, that is 63%, goes to equipment procurement and digital infrastructure. Only 2.6 million, or 37%, goes to people and services. Most of the budget will therefore be converted into machinery and software. Equipment on its own does not produce innovation, it produces depreciation. Innovation is produced only when someone uses it, for someone, with a specific purpose.

The ways in which this undertaking can fail are known in advance, which is precisely why there will be no excuse if they occur. Equipment installed and left idle because no one worked on demand. Labs operating in parallel instead of interconnected. Publicity actions substituting for the service instead of announcing it. Deliverables submitted on time that change nothing for any business.

There is no administrative remedy for that. There is only work and accountability.

What success actually means

What will be measured needs to be agreed now, because indicators defined at the end always vindicate whoever defines them.

1. How many businesses entered an experiment cycle and how many completed it.
2. How much time passes between the submission of a request and the first substantive response, and how much until the first test.
3. How many businesses came back for a second service. Repeat use is the most honest indicator of value there is.
4. How many experiments led to an investment decision, a new product, a certification or a hire.
5. How much of the equipment was actually used, measured in operating hours per year.

All five are measurable, publishable and leave no room for interpretation.

What is needed from here on

The Operation has been approved. Responsibility now shifts from the file to the service. Six things are needed, each of them entirely achievable.

1. The updated programme agreement must be completed without delay, with decisions from the competent bodies of every partner, so that the pre-contractual audit can proceed without loss of time.
2. Each body must name the people who will do the work. Not services, but individuals with a name, a mandate and available time.
3. The single entry point for requests must operate from day one, even by simple means, before the Digital Portal is complete. The procedure comes before the tool.
4. No equipment procurement should start without a documented plan for its use. Who operates it, for which services, against what demand.
5. State aid conditions and the de minimis methodology must be strictly observed. This is not bureaucracy, it is the precondition for not being asked to return the money in five years.
6. Results should be published with the same speed as intentions.

The precondition that appears in no document

Files record budgets, deliverables and timetables. What they do not record is what holds all of it upright.

None of what is described here would have moved forward without strong political will. In this case, that of the Regional Governor of Western Macedonia, who backed the effort at every stage of the process, and that of the governing bodies of the participating institutions, which accepted to commit to a common scheme with common rules and shared accountability. In projects of this complexity, political will is not decorative. It is the factor that determines whether the services will have the cover to take risks, to hold their ground against appraisal comments, and to carry a file through to the end.

Conclusion

Western Macedonia has seen many programmes. It has less often seen its institutions genuinely working together, with a common plan, common data and shared accountability. That is exactly the bet here, and it is bigger than the Operation itself, because if it works it proves the model can be repeated.

The Regional Development Fund took on the coordinating role because someone had to hold the whole together, absorb the pressure of the appraisal and account for everyone. That role was at times exercised insistently towards the partners, and this is acknowledged. The pressure was not an end in itself, it was the only way to carry a file of this complexity through to completion.

The hard part, though, begins now. The file is closed, the service is opening. It is in the hands of the participating bodies to prove that cooperation is not a declaration but a method, and that it can bear fruit for society by genuinely supporting the businesses of the area. There are no magic wands. There is a plan, there are resources, there is an institutional framework, and there is, for the first time, a scheme that connects all of it. The rest is work.

Sources: Approval Decision ref. 134266 of 21.08.2026 (published in the Greek Transparency Programme, Diavgeia), approved Technical File of the Operation 102835, Action Plan of the Operation, Living Labs Programme Agreement, Call 1.1.10.2 (published in the Greek Transparency Programme, Diavgeia). Operation MIS 6050844, budget 7,000,000 euro, implementation period from 01.08.2026 to 31.12.2029.

Dimitris Mavromatidis | General Director of the Regional Development Fund of Western Macedonia
Region of Western Macedonia