Role of twinnings in scaling up innovative solutions across Europe

Introduction Twinnings are cross-border knowledge exchange activities where two or more organisations learn from each other’s experiences and are often used as a scaling up mechanism. Objectives This paper discusses the importance of twinning activities in scaling up by promoting community building, knowledge sharing and innovation transfer among stakeholders in European countries. It explores the role of twinnings in the scaling up model of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing) and the Innovation Networks for Scaling Active and Healthy Ageing (IN-4-AHA) project. Methods The study employed a qualitative approach, drawing insights from various sources, including the Scale AHA study (2017), the IN-4-AHA’s scaling up model and twinning reports. Results The findings reveal that twinning activities provide stakeholders with a unique opportunity to learn from the know-how of other like-minded partners, improve the quality of their work and iterate on their innovations. They also highlight that twinnings are particularly relevant for some stages in the scaling up process, such as in the assessment of a network of potential partners and during the evaluation of the environment, the innovation could potentially be transferred to. Conclusion Twinnings are highly regarded as community-building and knowledge-sharing activities with clear advantages for companies and other stakeholder groups. Including twinning activities in the scaling up model has proven benefits for companies and projects that have a strong need for community building and innovation transfer.