Innovalia Association is a an independent private Associated Research Lab, established by a group of technology-based companies that are all highly aware of that innovation, as an inherent business process, is a necessity for maintaining competitiveness. The Innovalia Association serves as a mean for articulating critical mass to successfully address the ambitious and long-term research objectives of the associated companies. The association was founded in 2002, sprung from Innovalia, which is a strategic alliance of companies with more than 20 years of collaboration in research and innovation. Innovalia allied companies have participated and headed numerous research projects, funded on a national, international or bilateral basis. Innovalia’s business activities broadly span the whole European market, covering the supply of RTD services, the networking of private and public companies with heavy emphasis on SMEs, SME collaboration activities and SME training.
The Innovalia Association is organised into three different Units: Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) Unit; Nanotechnology and Advanced Metrological Unit; Manufacturing and Knowledge Management Unit. These units assemble skills, laboratories and resources from the allied companies and they also benefit from a high degree of collaboration with external companies, both on national and European level. Innovalia Association is member of the Innobasque Network, which is made up of various Basque organisations with innovation is a strategic priority. Innovalia Association is the coordinating entity of the FP6 Integrated Project Nano-CMM, one of the few integrated projects led by a high-tech SME. It has also long experience in technical coordination of projects, such as iTETRIS in FP7, and the already finished FP6 projects MULTINET and CSA REDEST. It has also served as Business Innovation Office of the FP6 Integrated Project Co-Spaces and it is the Spanish cluster representative of the European Europortal Project. Innovalia is furthermore taking part in the SECRICOM FP7 Integrated Project “Security communications for Crisis Management”. On national level, Innovalia is the technical coordinator of FASyS, one of 18 Spanish flag-ship industrial R&D projects in 2009 (CENIT programme), addressing advanced ICT solutions for secure and healthy factories of the future.
Innovalia Association’s vision is to be a key driver for its associated companies’ continuous improvements and growth, via the performance of research activities founded on a systemic and systematic focus on innovation. It supports the generation, diffusion and transfer of specialised knowledge, with a clear and structured emphasis on the main strategic principles: technological innovation, business cooperation, market oriented actions and development of highly specialised knowledge niches with a strong added value. Thus, in some specific, relevant and state-of-the-art technologies Innovalia Association positions itself as a national and/or international reference of excellence.
Innovalia Association’s activities adapt to the continuous evolution of new collaboration structures in order to make the allied companies benefit as much as possible of its innovation activities. It has an unmistakable vocation for service provision, always within its competency and specialisation area.
To uphold and strengthen its position, the association has developed collaboration agreements with a selected group of R&D centres, SMEs and large enterprises that are characterised by their brilliance and proven commitment to R&D. Innovalia Association, as an RTD and Innovation unit of the Innovalia alliance, supports the linked companies with:
- Elaboration of strategic development plans based on research lines and technological development plans, serving as a technology monitoring unit.
- Development of R&D based solutions, clearly market oriented, for use in the products or services offered by each of the associated companies.
- Transfer, training and diffusion activities, as well as market oriented activities.
The Innovalia Association plays an important role, moving naturally between on the one hand long-term innovation strategies in collaboration with technology centres of highest level and on the other hand a business minded approach with focus on the commercialisation and technological transfer of the RTD lines explored.
In order to contribute actively to the improvement of technological services of medium-high level, one of the Innovalia Association’s focuses is on the ICT area, with three fundamental axes. These are the communication quality, the security as a tool to ensure the sustainability of the Association’s activities in the manufacturing industry, which also aims to generate new business opportunities and to be more attractive to the main world RTD units. The third axis is oriented towards software development. The development of agile methodologies as well as proactive and reactive embedded systems is going a step forward in the area of Software Quality. The expertise of the Association also comprises mobile services and applications aiming to improve the networking mechanisms and wireless infrastructures in industrial areas, as well as environmental intelligence through the creation of artificial vision algorithms.