Project description
Creating opportunities for SMEs
SMEs and start-ups are crucial to Europe’s economy and a vital source of creativity, innovation and job creation. This is why it is important to create an enabling environment. The EU funded GO – SME project will address the need to provide financial support to SMEs and start-ups for the development of their innovative ideas. Specifically, the project will share the best practices in terms of support schemes for innovative SMEs and start-ups. The project will design national and regional programmes supporting innovative SMEs. It could also serve as a pilot project for a plug-in mechanism and partnership co-funded by innovation ecosystems in the Horizon Europe programme.
Objective
Throughout the EU, the fragmentation of innovation ecosystems and the lack of interconnection between public national and regional agencies appear to be one of the main obstacles to securing support for the most promising SMEs. The GO-SME project responds to the need to provide financial support to SMEs and start-ups for the development of their innovative ideas. The aim of GO-SME is to share the best practices of participating research funding organisations (RFOs) and their mutual learning in designing programmes which would support SMEs and start-ups in an initial assessment of their innovative ideas so that they can progress to more advanced stages of innovation development.
To achieve this aim, a combination of the following activities will be used:
1/learning from best practices already applied in support schemes for innovative SMEs and startups,
2/motivation of agencies from widening countries to design innovation support schemes for SMEs and start-ups,
3/cooperation in the setting up of comparable support schemes and sets of selection criteria,
4/sharing of best practices in the work with (international) experts and sharing of their pools
5/learning from best practices in providing coaching and mentoring services to innovative SMEs and start-ups
6/mutual opening up pools of coaches and mentors
7/offering of special services to running projects which will be selected as the most promising by an independent international panel.
The added value of the project rests in its ambition to design national and regional programmes supporting innovative SMEs which could act as a pipeline for the EIC Accelerator and be part of the “plug-in” mechanism. At the same time, it can serve as a pilot project for a possible partnership co-funded from innovation ecosystems in the Horizon Europe programme.
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CSA - Coordination and support actionCoordinator
160 00 Praha
Czechia