On the 3 rd of March the on-line Kick-off Meeting of RRIstart (A Responsible Research & Innovation Model for Impact investment & Responsible Startups) project took place, with the participation of the representatives of all the organisations that form the Consortium. The works were opened by Andrea Riccio, Project Coordinator on behalf of Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza.
Vincent Blok and Eugen Popa, of Wageningen University (the Netherlands) presented the research activities that will be at the core of the project and that will involve all partners in the framework of WP1. In their presentation Blok and Popa highlighted the importance of studying the motivational aspects related to the adoption of ”Impact Investment” and to make a connection with “responsible innovation”. The results of this first phase of the work will then be tested in WP2 with ad-hoc pilot initiatives. This phase of the project was presented by Adrian Solomon e Nikos Zaharis, of SEERC (South-East European Research Centre) of Thessaloniki (Greece), the leaders of WP2. Andrea Declich, of K&I (Italy), leader of WP3, presented its content. WP3 is geared to promote the involvement of a broad constellation of Quadruple Helix actors in a dialogue on the issues of responsible investments and RRI.
The output will be the formulation of a set of guidelines and recommendations. The dissemination activities of the project were presented by Martina Iannuzzi, representative of the European Business Angels Network – EBAN, based in Brussels (Belgium). The importance of the communication angle was underlined by Pepa Krasteva, the Project Officer that will oversee the project on behalf of the European Research Executive Agency (REA), who suggested to launch such activities from the very start of the project, in consideration of the magnitude of the audience that RRIstart is tasked to reach. Also the other Greek partner of the project, Tsoulis Vasileios, representative of YET (Youth Entrepreneurship Education Technology) took part in the KoM.