Project description
Innovation co-creation by local and foreign stakeholders
Innovative start-ups in modest or moderate innovator regions face a challenge due to the lack of consistent and reliable collaboration between local stakeholders and external investors. This hinders their ability to scale up and expand their businesses effectively. In this context, the EU-funded SMAFINE project aims to create a robust ecosystem that supports both local and foreign stakeholders, while also collaborating closely with policymakers. The project aims to enhance capacity, facilitate connections and foster strong bonds within the ecosystem. Spanning six partners from four European countries, SMAFINE will develop a test bed involving incubators, accelerators, innovation agencies, and national and regional authorities. Its focus is on modest or moderate innovator regions, such as the south of Italy.
Objective
One of the main challenges of the Innovation Ecosystem in 'modest' or 'moderate' innovator regions is the lack of persistent and trustworthy cooperation between local stakeholders and external investors. This gap results in an insuperable obstacle for emerging startups that have no tools and occasions to scale up and develop their businesses. Lacking this, Europe is missing the chance to brighten up the overall enterprise system as thousands of brilliant ideas don’t generate positive spillovers. To tackle this issue, SMAFINE goal is to create a strong ecosystem based on three main pillars:1. Support local stakeholders - SMAFINE will implement activities of capacity building for local stakeholder, supporting the connection between innovation stakeholders and foreign investors; 2. Support foreign stakeholders - Foster the bond between foreign and local stakeholders through well-defined activities; 3. Co-creation with policy makers at local level and at 'modest' or 'moderate' innovator regions level.
SMAFINE consortium is composed by 6 partners (EY Advisory SPA; Deep Ecosystems 500 UG; RootCamp GmbH; Foreningen til drift af TechBBQ; Comune di Matera (CTE Matera); Sweden Foodtech AB) coming from 4 European countries and it will implement a 2 years project that aims to build a solid ecosystem in 'modest' or 'moderate' innovator region such the South of Italy, developing a testbed involving a wide participation of national and international actors as incubators, accelerators, company-builders, innovation agencies, business clubs and networks, public and private VCs and their networks, national and regional authorities.
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-CSA - HORIZON Coordination and Support ActionsCoordinator
20123 Milano
Italy