idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
idw - Informationsdienst
Wissenschaft
The Capacity2Transform (C2T) project – co-funded by the Interreg Central Europe Programme – is breaking new ground in helping Central Europe’s cultural and creative industries (CCIs) and sustainable tourism businesses embrace the twin green and digital transition. Through two ambitious pilot action strands, Transforming Capacities and Building Bridges, C2T is equipping entrepreneurs with new skills, forging cross-sector collaborations, and delivering innovative solutions for a more sustainable, competitive future. In an era when many companies struggle to go green and digital, C2T’s pilots offer a beacon of innovation, turning bold ideas into action across the region.
A twin challenge and an innovative approach
Central Europe’s twin transition – digitalization and decarbonization – poses a big challenge: many small firms in the creative and tourism sectors lack the know-how and support to transform their business models. Capacity2Transform tackles this head-on by uniting businesses, training institutions, researchers, and policymakers into a supportive ecosystem. The project’s two pilot strands serve as practical laboratories to build skills and bridges in these sectors:
- Transforming Capacities: a series of local pilot initiatives focused on upskilling and innovation in each participating region. Through workshops, hackathons, mentorship and e-learning, CCIs and tourism SMEs are learning to integrate digital tools and sustainable practices into their work. These pilots empowered professionals to experiment with new ideas on a small scale – reducing risk while learning what works.
- Building Bridges: a transnational co-creation process bringing diverse people together – creative professionals, tech experts, tourism operators, and more – to jointly develop solutions to real-world challenges. Through collaborative design sprints and innovation labs, this strand “bridged” sectors and regions, sparking fresh concepts that blend culture, technology, and sustainability. Building Bridges helped break silos and proved the power of co-creation in driving green and digital innovation.
Transforming capacities: skills & innovation on the ground
Between 2024 and 2025, the Transforming Capacities pilots mobilized more than 3,000 participants across 9 Central European regions, delivering over 160 capacity-building activities and co-developing 120+ digital, green, and creative solutions. Each project partner tailored activities to their region’s needs – from rural business sprints to urban innovation workshops – while sharing knowledge transnationally. The result was a wave of human-centered innovation, as local creatives and tourism entrepreneurs gained skills and confidence to transform their products and services.
Participants took part in hands-on trainings, peer exchanges and creative labs that turned abstract sustainability goals into concrete action. For example, in Slovenia, Primorska Technology Park (PTP) hosted a lively “speed dating” event connecting tourism providers with creative industry experts to spark partnerships for sustainable tourism solutions. In Croatia, an intensive GreenFluencer Academy trained 15 young environmental advocates to use digital storytelling and social media to promote green initiatives. And in Hungary, the SPARK! program helped local entrepreneurs align their business missions with sustainability through creative digital workshops – resulting in new eco-friendly business concepts and cross-sector partnerships. These are just a few highlights of how Transforming Capacities pilots put people at the center: artists, students, start-ups, and community leaders co-creating solutions that make both economic and ecological sense.
Importantly, these local pilots did more than run workshops – they built lasting networks.
Each region’s activities brought together stakeholders who do not usually mix, seeding collaborations that continue beyond the project. As an example, in Czech Republic a data-driven Tourism Innovation Jam in Prague paired marketing creatives with data analysts and tourism SMEs to design smarter, greener visitor experiences. The participants not only generated actionable project ideas, but also formed new professional connections across industries. By focusing on practical co-creation, the Transforming Capacities strand showed how empowering people with the right skills and contacts can accelerate the green/digital shift from the ground up.
Building bridges: co-creating across sectors and borders
If Transforming Capacities strengthened local foundations, the Building Bridges pilot actions took things a step further – uniting talents across regions to tackle challenges together. Throughout 2025, C2T partnership organized a series of collaborative regional and transnational workshops to test how digital-green transformation can be driven by co-creation, open innovation, and local engagement. These events invited multidisciplinary teams – from software developers and designers to tourism managers and policy experts – to jointly brainstorm and prototype solutions that neither sector could develop alone.
In practice, Building Bridges meant dynamic hackathons, design sprints and innovation labs hosted in different Central European cities. In Split, Croatia, for instance, a two-day co-creation sprint brought together public utility experts, NGOs, business advisors, and tech specialists to design the “Green Olympic” concept – a playful competition engaging citizens in sustainability initiatives. In Karlsruhe, Germany, a Creative Workshop linked tourism professionals with digital creatives to develop a new eco-friendly wine tourism experience for the Ortenau region. And in Austria, an open call invited creative thinkers from all nine countries to collaborate on real-life green transformation challenges, from cutting carbon footprints at events to applying AI in tourism marketing.
Through these high-energy sessions, participants discovered that diversity is a strength: a film festival organizer from Italy, a startup founder from Slovakia, and a cultural manager from Slovenia might form a team, each contributing unique insights. The Building Bridges process resulted in dozens of innovative concepts – from smart heritage tourism apps to community-led “green tourism” campaigns – and at least 10 prototypes or pilot solutions now being tested in the field. Equally important, it built a transnational community of practice. Creatives and entrepreneurs who met at C2T workshops are continuing to collaborate online, sharing tools and even planning cross-border projects. This network effect is a testament to how Building Bridges has shrunk distances and built trust among Central Europe’s innovators.
Empowering change with knowledge factory and media factory
To amplify the impact of these pilots, Capacity2Transform introduced two cutting-edge platforms: KnowledgeFactory and MediaFactory. These platforms ensure that the skills, ideas, and collaborations sparked by C2T can spread further and last longer:
- KnowledgeFactory: a collaborative online hub that connects people and organizations working to improve entrepreneurial environments across Europe. Through this platform, business support organizations, educators, and innovators can exchange best practices, access training modules, and continue peer learning beyond the pilot events. In essence, KnowledgeFactory turns the project’s short-term workshops into a long-term resource for capacity building. A creative professional in one country can find toolkits or mentors from another, fostering ongoing transnational knowledge sharing. This is crucial for keeping CCIs and tourism SMEs up-to-date with digital and green skills even after the project’s end.
- MediaFactory: a digital content platform designed to produce and deliver high-quality content about the green and digital transition. MediaFactory acts as a storytelling and awareness engine – showcasing success stories and insights from the project to a broad audience of SMEs, policymakers and the public. By disseminating innovative practices and featuring real examples (like those co-created in the pilots), it inspires others to follow suit. From a local artisan learning about eco-design via an online video to a regional agency discovering new policy ideas through case studies, MediaFactory helps multiply C2T’s influence. The platform ensures that the transformative journey toward a sustainable future – as pioneered by C2T – is promoted widely, motivating more communities to join the movement.
Together, these platforms are key legacies of the project. They extend the pilots’ reach, turn project outputs into open knowledge, and continue to build bridges among stakeholders online. The potential benefits are manifold: entrepreneurs gain ongoing support, creative solutions find new adopters, and Central Europe gains a shared space to drive the digital-green transition collectively.
Steinbeis Europa Zentrum (Germany) focused on storytelling and regional branding as tools for transformation. The pilot in Baden-Württemberg included workshops on using storytelling and creative marketing to promote sustainable wine tourism. With 112 participants including wine producers and cultural entrepreneurs, Steinbeis Europa Zentrum helped develop 9 solutions – such as eco-tourism itineraries and cultural events – showcasing how creative entrepreneurship can revitalize traditional industries.
A lasting impact: toward a greener, more creative future
As the Capacity2Transform project nears completion, the legacy of the Transforming Capacities and Building Bridges pilots is just beginning. These pilots have shown that when people are given the skills, support, and space to innovate together, remarkable things happen: local traditions find new life through technology, small businesses become sustainability champions, and creative minds turn environmental challenges into opportunities. Crucially, the project’s approach is replicable – any region can take these models and adapt them to its own needs. By demonstrating real-world successes, C2T’s pilots are building confidence among policy makers and communities that the green and digital transition is not just a buzzword, but a tangible path to a better future.
The long-term impact could be transformative. Hundreds of entrepreneurs and creatives across Central Europe are now better equipped to drive change in their industries. Stronger networks – locally and across borders – mean that innovative ideas and best practices will keep flowing, amplified by the KnowledgeFactory and MediaFactory platforms. And as more sustainable products and services reach the market, Central Europe’s regions stand to gain economically while preserving their cultural and natural heritage. In the words of the project team, empowering CCIs and tourism SMEs with digital-green skills isn’t just about individual businesses – it’s about energizing whole communities to thrive in the 21st century.
The project is co-funded by the European Union under the Interreg Central Europe Programme.
Contact
Dr. Clémentine Roth, Steinbeis Europa Zentrum (clementine.roth@steinbeis-europa.de).
https://www.interreg-central.eu/projects/capacity2transform/ - Official website
https://www.linkedin.com/company/capacity2transform/ - LinkedIn
https://digital-green-creative.eu/ - Media Factory
https://capacitytotransform.eu/ - Knowledge Factory
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