The Wine Lab: Generating Innovation Between Practice and Research—Exploring the Views from Wine Makers and Policy Makers

The wine sector is very important for Europe, being a key producer, exporter and consumption player. It is composed of small producers, thus facing large problems and challenges to survive in the extreme competitive environment. Under this concept, the Wine Lab project is funded by the European Union and Erasmus+ and is implemented to share knowledge, challenges and solutions and produce innovation in the wine sector. This paper reports the results of a qualitative research conducted under this project. Semi structured interviews were used providing insight from 77 stakeholders in the wine industry, from the four countries participating in the project: Austria, Greece, Hungry, and Italy. Subjects discussed dealt with (a) Perceived difficulties of small wineries in disadvantaged areas; (b) Perceived potential of the cooperation with higher education institutions (c) Perceived potential for territorial development; (d) Perceived skills mismatch between the company needs and the newly graduates worker. Results, conclusions are presented and suggestions for future implementation are provided.