A missing holistic transnational/regional approach in the Alpine Space causes existing actors in the bio-based economy to operate disjointed. Relevant clusters operate disconnected, important value chains are not established especially for producing high value applications and products that address critical societal needs: circular economy, environmental sustainability, local employment and quality of life.

In this project, iCoSys has developed a computer-based support for linking actors in the Alpine Space and create new value chains in the bio-based economy. The Value Chain Generator (VCG) is based on a central database of actors that are described using NACE codes as well as more detailed input-process-output descriptors in natural language. By means of a web application, the VCG allows cluster managers to discover new biolinks and scale-up biolink ideas across the whole Alpine region.

The second phase of the project, DeepVCG, was implemented methods to automatically populate the database of companies and biolinks using AI. The research later resulted in a spinnoff called vcg.ai