At the Centre of Collaboration: How BIOEAST HUB Connects the Bioeconomy Ecosystem
Driving systemic change in the bioeconomy requires more than technological innovation – it depends on strong regional ecosystems, policy alignment, and collaboration across sectors and initiatives. In Bio4HUMAN, this means connecting technical research with broader bioeconomy strategies, stakeholder networks, and long-term pathways for implementation and replication.
BIOEAST HUB CZ brings this macro-regional perspective into the project. As the first national BIOEAST HUB established in the BIOEAST region, the organisation plays a key role in strengthening collaboration between research, policy, and innovation communities. Within Bio4HUMAN, BIOEAST HUB contributes to scoping, environmental assessment, socio-economic and governance evaluation, and dissemination and collaboration activities. HUB also leads cross-project synergies and co-leads the development of the Bio4HUMAN Replication Roadmap together with IBF — one of the project’s key legacy outputs supporting the future uptake and scaling of circular bio-based solutions in humanitarian contexts.
In this interview, we speak with Katerina Panailidou from BIOEAST HUB about the importance of macro-regional cooperation, cross-project collaboration, and how knowledge exchange platforms can help accelerate the adoption of sustainable bio-based solutions in humanitarian and resource-constrained settings.
BIOEAST HUB focuses strongly on stakeholder engagement and ecosystem building. Why is building a coordinated multi-actor ecosystem essential for moving bioeconomy innovation from research into real-world adoption and market uptake?
Katerina: Most of the time, bioeconomy innovation is not hindered by a lack of technology, but rather due to gaps between research, policy, financing, and real‑world needs. Research organisations can generate knowledge, public authorities have the power to create enabling frameworks, industry and SMEs drive market uptake, and civil society and end‑users ensure solutions are socially acceptable and fit each situation – no actor can successfully tackle any of this alone.
From our perspective at BIOEAST HUB CR, a multi-actor ecosystem ensures that innovations (whether those are tactile solutions or methodologies) that are developed in projects like Bio4HUMAN relate to the regional realities on all levels from the beginning. This coordination between actors can reduce the risk of innovations remaining at pilot level and can increase their chances of long‑term deployment or replication across regions.
BIOEAST HUB leads activities focused on synergies and collaboration with other projects and initiatives. Why is cross-project cooperation important for scaling results, accelerating learning, and preventing fragmentation or duplication of effort in the bioeconomy landscape?
Katerina: Many bioeconomy challenges are systemic and cannot be addressed within the boundaries of a single project, so cross‑project cooperation is crucial to reduce the risk of duplicate efforts, development of parallel tools, or missing opportunities to build on each other’s results.
In Bio4HUMAN, BIOEAST HUB CR is actively leading synergies and collaboration with other relevant projects and initiatives, allowing knowledge, methodologies, and lessons learned to circulate more efficiently across the bioeconomy community. Cross‑project cooperation gives the opportunity to partners to compare approaches, identify what works in different contexts, and potentially collectively refine solutions. It is often the case that projects with perhaps not so similar topics can identify either common approaches or aligned targets that they can align their efforts in reaching. A collaborative approach can also strengthen the visibility and credibility of project results, making it easier to communicate coherent and collective messages to policymakers or other stakeholders that may be challenging to engage.
How can clustering activities between Horizon projects, Joint Undertakings, and macro-regional initiatives accelerate innovation uptake and policy influence?
Katerina: Clustering activities create a stronger voice – when Horizon projects, Joint Undertakings, and macro‑regional initiatives align their efforts, they amplify each other’s impact rather than working in isolation, which is particularly important in bioeconomy, where innovation uptake is heavily impacted by policy coherence, long‑term investment opportunities, and regional implementation capacity.
Macro‑regional initiatives like BIOEAST provide a natural platform for this alignment of efforts. They have the ability to enable the connection of project results to policy processes, regional strategies, and national administrations. Through clustering, results and evidence generated at project level can be translated into policy recommendations and policymakers can gain access to concrete, tested solutions. This ensures that policy development is influenced by real implementation experience, accelerating innovation uptake.
BIOEAST HUB is co-leading the development of the Bio4HUMAN Replication Roadmap. From your perspective, what makes this roadmap particularly valuable for external stakeholders?
Katerina: The Bio4HUMAN Replication Roadmap will go beyond describing project results and focus on how those results can be taken up, adapted, and then scaled by others. External stakeholders like regional authorities, humanitarian organisations, or innovators, often lack the capacity to interpret complex technical analyses.
BIOEAST HUB CR, along with our co-leaders IBF, will present a replication roadmap that will gather technical, environmental, socio‑economic, and governance insights derived by the extensive efforts of our Bio4HUMAN partners, structured to offer clear guidance on conditions for replication, potential barriers, and enabling factors, making it a practical tool or guide for decision‑makers who want to implement circular bio‑based solutions for solid waste management in different regional and humanitarian contexts.
The roadmap aims to translate complex technical and analytical findings into practical implementation guidance. Why is this translation step so important for real-world adoption?
Katerina: The translation step is critical because most external stakeholders are not technical experts. Life Cycle Assessments, socio‑economic evaluations, or governance analyses are essential, but their impact is ensured only if their conclusions are understandable and actionable.
This translation, of essentially the Bio4HUMAN approach, will help with the implementation of the results. It will allow stakeholders to understand what a solution requires in terms of resources, governance arrangements, and local conditions, without needing to engage with the full technical complexity behind it, while also providing information to encourage a similar exploration of solutions that are more fitting to other settings. The aim is to increase confidence, reduce the perceived risk, and support informed decision‑making, which is essential for real‑world adoption and scaling.
What role do macro-regional initiatives like BIOEAST play in supporting the long-term scale-up of circular bio-based solutions?
Katerina: Macro‑regional initiatives can ensure continuity beyond individual projects by providing long‑term strategic frameworks that can link innovation activities to regional development priorities, policy agendas, and funding instruments.
BIOEAST and BIOEAST HUB CR support scale‑up by fostering stakeholder networks, coordinating thematic working groups, and working to align project outcomes with macro‑regional strategies, so that successful solutions developed in projects like Bio4HUMAN do not end when project funding ends, but instead become part of broader regional transformation pathways in the bioeconomy.
Looking beyond Bio4HUMAN, what do you see as the biggest opportunity for stronger collaboration between the bioeconomy and humanitarian sectors?
Katerina: There is a great capacity of bioeconomy innovation that can be driven by the humanitarian sector’s deep understanding of vulnerable and resource‑constrained contexts. However, bio‑based and circular solutions can address critical needs like waste management only if they are designed with the vastly different local realities in mind.
A stronger collaboration will help ensure that bioeconomy innovations are not only sustainable in environmental terms, but also socially appropriate, resilient, and scalable in humanitarian settings. Platforms for knowledge exchange, replication tools like the Bio4HUMAN roadmap, and cross‑sector partnerships are key enablers for making this collaboration systematic and expand beyond the limits of a single project.
Bio:
The BIOEAST HUB CZ is the first national BIOEAST HUB in the BIOEAST region established in line with the BIOEAST Governance and Roadmap and with the support of BIOEAST NCP and the Ministry of Agriculture CZ to gather stakeholders and support their engagement in bioeconomy. The BIOEAST HUB CZ is the coordinator of two BIOEAST Thematic Working Groups – Fresh Water Based Bioeconomy and Bioeconomy Education established at the macro-regional level.
In Bio4HUMAN, BIOEAST HUB actively participates in various tasks associated with the “Mapping the ground and Scoping exercise Phase 1” work package (WP3), the “Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of innovative bio-based solutions” work package (WP5), the “Socio-economic and governance aspects evaluation” work package (W6), and the “Dissemination, communication and exploitation” work packages (WP7&8), while also leading the “Synergies and collaborations with other relevant projects and initiatives” task within WP7&8, as well as the task of creating a replication plan, guidelines, and recommendations together with IBF within WP8.