POMURSKI TEHNOLOSKI PARK PODJETJE ZA POSPESEVANJE PODJETNISTVA V POMURJU DOO

Their core work

Pomurje Technology Park is a regional innovation intermediary based in Murska Sobota, a rural border region of northeastern Slovenia. Their core work is running a Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) that helps local SMEs adopt industrial robotics, IoT, and agile manufacturing practices — acting as a bridge between advanced technology providers and small manufacturers who lack the internal capacity to digitize on their own. They also operate as a scale-up accelerator, running cross-border "Scaleup Labs" that help early-stage deep tech companies in sectors like agtech and health grow beyond their home market. In essence, they are the digital transformation engine for an underserved regional economy, connecting Pomurje businesses to pan-European technology networks.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their first H2020 engagement (2019) was firmly in the industrial digitisation space — robotics adoption, IoT deployment, and agile production for manufacturing SMEs. By their second project (2020), the focus broadened significantly toward supporting scale-ups in deep tech, with explicit attention to health, agtech, and the concept of a "smart region." This shift suggests they are evolving from a technology adoption facilitator (helping SMEs use existing tools) toward an innovation ecosystem builder (helping new companies scale across borders). The trajectory points toward a more entrepreneurial, startup-facing role rather than purely an industrial SME support function.

They are moving from technology adoption services toward cross-border scale-up infrastructure, making them an increasingly useful partner for projects that need regional testbed access in underrepresented EU areas combined with startup acceleration expertise.

How they like to work

Pomurje Technology Park has exclusively participated as a consortium partner — never as coordinator — across both H2020 projects. Despite this, they have engaged with 42 distinct partners across 27 countries, which is unusually broad for an organisation with only two projects and indicates they joined very large, pan-European network projects rather than small bilateral collaborations. This suggests they are effective at plugging into established European networks and delivering regional implementation, rather than driving research agendas themselves.

With 42 unique partners across 27 countries from just two projects, their network footprint is disproportionately wide for their size — a direct result of joining large pan-European consortia like DIH² and Scaleup4Europe. Their geographic reach spans most of the EU, though their operational focus remains anchored in the Slovenian-Austrian-Hungarian border region.

What sets them apart

Pomurje Technology Park occupies a rare niche: a small SME-class innovation intermediary in one of Slovenia's least-industrialised regions that has nonetheless secured access to large pan-European digital and scale-up networks. For consortium builders, this is valuable because it provides genuine outreach into an underrepresented EU region — Pomurje qualifies as a less-developed area — which can strengthen a project's geographic inclusivity and widening criteria. They are not a research producer, but a trusted regional gateway that can mobilise local SMEs, test pilots in a real regional context, and connect deep tech with agricultural and manufacturing end-users in a border-area setting.

Highlights from their portfolio

• Scaleup4Europe
  Their largest award (€334,000) and broadest thematic scope — combining deep tech, health, agtech, and smart region in a cross-border scale-up lab model — signals their most ambitious and recent strategic direction.
• DIH²
  Membership in this pan-European robotics DIH network (one of the flagship EU digital innovation infrastructure projects) established their credentials as a recognised regional hub for industrial digitalisation.