A majority of the PIPE project partners joined another INTERREG project from 1th February 2005 until October 2007; The Innovation Circle.

The final PIPE report is ready. Lead Partner will send a copy to all partners. The report summarises all activities and event. The main part of the report is Professor Cliff Hagues overall evaluation report. You can order the report from Østfold county council. Trine.Moe.Stokstad@ostfold-f.kommune.no

May all PIPErs have a fantastic New Year where ever you are and remember the great times we had in 2004.

A new web page will be elaborated for the Innovation Circle project. In the meantime you can follow the progression and news about the project at this site.

10 December 2004 was a happy day for all PIPErs. The follow up initiative called Innovation Circle was approved by the Steering Committe in INTERREG III B, Baltic Sea Region. The Lead Partner is Alytus City Municipality, and all together there are 15 other partners in the new project(see map). These are from Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Norway and Sweden. Many of them were partners in PIPE. Some are new. Østfold County Council as the Lead Partner in PIPE is also joining the new project.

Sept 30, 2004 was the last day of the PIPE project. All activities are now finalised. The project webpage will be open for 5 years until the December 31, 2009. The website will be open for exploration, research and auditing purposes and maintained at the server by Custom Publish. The address will still excist. The discussion forum will be open for life signals and new inputs.

Now we can present one trailer from the EXPO in Ulricehamn. It can be downloaded from here : http://qrm.pri.ee/pipeexpo2004/index.html

PIPE final evaluation meeting September 20 approved the project results and closed the project. Remaining activities are only submitting reports to the Joint Secretariat. Representatives from all partners were gathered in the final meeting in Rovaniemi, and Lead Partner representative Svein Aage Lauritzen chaired the meeting together with representatives from Ostfold county council.

Some of the partners in the PIPE project and some others are preparing a follow up initiative. The main idea is to spread the methodology developed an tested out in PIPE in order to take care of the results. Last Saturday there was a meeting in Alytus about this, where 7 future partners were gathered. The youths from PIPE gave a presentation about how they worked in PIPE, but also how the Business Angel is working with youths and entrepreneurship at many levels. As usual they gave an impressive performance.

Yesterday 5th of August we had the official opening at the Twinpark of Rovaniemi.

When we talk about investment in business, we think about the money first of all. Money is very important. But to invest in the future generation is also very important and maybe it is even more important than to invest in a single business. Such investment in future innovations can be teaching and motivation of young enthusiastic people.