The NMU project built on the broad range of knowledge and expertise in the North Sea area, which was being harnessed within a common and lasting transnational network of universities. The Northern Maritime University directly addressed the needs of the maritime industry: To better prepare maritime business managers to cope with growing maritime traffic, port development, and rising environmental challenges by developing multidisciplinary and internationally oriented qualifications at Bachelors and Masters level.

NMU worked towards establishing an Area of Research and Innovation for the maritime industry in the North Sea Region, contributing towards the Lisbon strategy to create a more effective maritime business sector and an enhanced competitiveness of the maritime sector.

NMU was also represented in the MTC cluster.

NSSP sought to tap the potential of the creative industries (i.e. the film industry) to promote innovation and growth in the North Sea Region and increase the region's competitiveness in a global context. Transnational cooperation was concentrated on common challenges, such as marketing, financing and SME support.

The project aimed to tackle issues such as fragmented national markets inhibiting critical mass creation (developing economies of scale), lack of coherence and coordination of actors and actions across the North Sea Region, and loss of talents in more peripheral areas.

Ships' ballast water is a main source of acute and chronic pollution in the North Sea. The project aimed to improve the North Sea environment and economy by facilitating the ratification of the Ballast Water Management Convention (BWMC).

The implementation of the BWMC created a new market for innovative products. Ballast Water Opportunity aimed to support the North Sea Region industry to enter this market. It encouraged the ratification of the BWMC through reducing a major barrier: providing treatment and detection equipment.

As a result, common certification standards for BWT were defined, which would stimulate technological development to comply and enforce the BWMC.

The project addressed efficiency and effectiveness of the North Sea Region transport freight. To secure the NSR as a global competitor, the project developed an intelligent transport solution (ITS), which will improve accessibility, reduce environmental damage in the North Sea Region and enable the region to develop a dynamic logistics solution which is scalable across the EU.

As the main result, the project developed a multi-lingual electronic communication and data capture system for the freight supply chain to provide information to end users, transport managers, freight handlers about the conditions in the area that they are about to enter. Thereby the project aimed to improve efficiency, safety and security in the supply chain of the North Sea Region and promoted the development of efficient and effective logistics solutions.

Small markets in the North Sea Region and SME access barriers to European supply markets were key problems addressed by the project. They cause competitive disadvantages for Northern SMEs and their regions compared to suppliers and regions involved in large regions. If SMEs stuck to prosperity of traditional regional markets, major markets would be at risk. This risk was further aggravated by the ongoing global economic crisis, which challenged regional economies to join forces with partners at an interregional level in order to regain competitiveness and to master structural change.

NorthseaSupply adressed them with a Company Register and Training Measures with a SME-oriented partnership.

During the last few years, the costs for fossil energy resources have been heavily increasing. A possibility to absorb rising costs is to critically question the status quo of energy consumption in order to be able to use existing energy saving potentials. Rising energy costs are contributing to a steadily increasing source of financial pressure for public utilities. This leads to a negative cycle: the public bodies have a lower budget at hand while at the same time the costs are rising, despite the lower demand. There is no available model showing how to link energy policies with the regional and/or local development.

The aim of North Sea - SEP was to foster a future oriented development on regional level by an energy oriented approach. To tackle these problems, the project had to improve local/regional development and the decision making processes by creating tools for regional planners. Successful reorientation and creation of new profiles like energy regions had to consider all actors in a region to involve them in the processes and to create ground for interactive development. Therefore methods and tools for regional planning and decision making were developed with focus on systematic energy planning.

The approach of the North Sea Fish project was to enhance logistics in the total supply chain of wet fish from catch to plate. This included logistical solutions for fish based regional economies to benefit local communities.

North Sea Fish focused on broadening the supply chain to include alternative sustainable solutions, specialization of activities in parts of the chain and increasing the efficiency between chain parts. These innovations aimed to safeguard the much needed change of fisheries towards a sustainable, consumer-oriented and competitive future.

In NSSEP PLUS partners from all EU Member States represented in the North Sea Region Programme and a non-co-fundable Norwegian participation further exploited and refined the potential of the CO2-calculator tool. A key outcome under the NSSEP project, this tool was the perfect instrument to work on the mindset towards carbon reduction.

The central goal was to communicate with this tool and through new partners, means, methods and multipliers how actions of public authorities, SMEs, organisations, individual citizens and other stakeholders easily contributed to the CO2-reduction goal.