TIS - TECHNO INNOVATION SOUTH TYROL SCPA

Their core work

TIS Innovation Park is a publicly-owned innovation intermediary based in Bolzano, South Tyrol, northern Italy. Their core mission is helping SMEs access EU funding instruments and navigate innovation management — most concretely through MAKEOVER, a programme delivering key account services and SME Instrument advisory to small businesses across the Triveneto region. They also organize public science engagement, including the annual Researchers' Night (Lunga Notte della Ricerca), connecting scientists with general audiences through edutainment events. In practical terms, TIS functions as a regional bridge between the local business community and the European research and funding ecosystem.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

TIS's H2020 engagement is confined to 2014–2015, offering only a glimpse of their trajectory. Their first project (LUNA 2014) centred on science communication and public engagement; their second (MAKEOVER) shifted toward direct operational support for SMEs seeking EU funding. This suggests a move from awareness-building activities toward hands-on business service delivery, though with only two projects the evidence is too thin to confirm a durable strategic shift.

The pivot from public science events toward SME advisory services indicates TIS is positioning itself as an operational innovation intermediary for businesses, though their H2020 engagement appears to have stalled entirely after 2015.

How they like to work

TIS has acted exclusively as a consortium partner — never as coordinator — across both H2020 projects. With 13 unique partners concentrated within a single country, their collaboration footprint is geographically tight and regionally anchored. They are best understood as a regional access point that joins consortia to represent the local SME community or deliver regional events, rather than an organisation that drives or leads European projects.

TIS worked with 13 consortium partners, all within Italy, reflecting a strictly regional rather than European network. Their connections appear anchored in the Triveneto area — South Tyrol, Veneto, and Friuli — consistent with MAKEOVER's explicit Triveneto regional mandate.

What sets them apart

TIS occupies a distinctive niche as a publicly-funded innovation park in South Tyrol — a bilingual Italian-German border region with structural ties to both the Italian and Austrian/German business ecosystems — giving it a natural role in facilitating north-south technology transfer within Europe. Their public mandate and regional embeddedness make them a credible local partner for consortia seeking to demonstrate regional SME outreach or dissemination in northern Italy. That said, their very limited H2020 record means their European research network is considerably thinner than that of established innovation parks in larger Italian cities.

Highlights from their portfolio

• MAKEOVER
  The most substantive engagement, focused on delivering hands-on SME Instrument advisory and innovation management services across the Triveneto region — directly aligned with TIS's core intermediary mission.
• LUNA 2014
  The only project with confirmed EC funding (EUR 18,508), delivering South Tyrol's Researchers' Night science communication event and representing TIS's public engagement role.