Middle and Southern Italy area are treasured as a human heritage worldwide, thanks to their landscapes, the healthy way of life and their natural gems. By the way, INCAME consortium partners are willing to add another added value to this well-known scoreboard.
Some experienced Enterprise Europe Network partners operating in those Italian areas, whose expertise range from business consultancy to innovation strategy planning, built up a consortium, applying for H2020-INNOSUP-2014-2015, to increase the local SMEs’ capacity of tackling the dramatically high request of innovation and competitiveness coming from the EU market, pressed by emerging economies to lead the stage. INCAME consortium groups together public and public/private agencies for innovation and technologies and chambers of commerce to provide a double support: for the SME Instrument beneficiaries, to guide and accompany them in such an ambitious path towards coaching activities, business strategy, innovation management, till their products concretely uptake the market; for potentially innovative SMEs, to let them acquire a deep awareness of their capabilities, developing competences, shaping successful and concrete scenarios.
To give an idea of how ambitious this initiative actually is, it’s interesting to go through the Union Innovation scoreboard, annually ranking EU member states and regions in terms of innovation and competitiveness, and have a look to the performance characterizing the regions covered by INCAME Consortium. These regions are labelled as moderate innovators, following trends and paths already marked by other regions, operating as innovation drivers. This starting point acted as further motivational push for the INCAME partners to carry on their purpose to enhance the innovation management capacity of SMEs.
They firstly tested and increased their own knowledge and analysis skills about growth and innovation management consultancy being trained by IMP3rove, the European Innovation Management Academy, then they delivered high specialized support and assistance to potentially innovative SMEs operating locally in their regions. Some of partners also examined and used other tools complying with European standards in order to speed up activities.
They found out many firms and entrepreneurs willing to go international with their ambitious business plans, often kept inside a drawer because of the pressure of everyday business routine.
Thanks to EU funding opportunities, many companies had the chance to be accompanied in a concrete way towards a valorization of their business idea, being orientated and assisted by experts, allowing frustration being gradually replaced by commitment and willingness to try, to approach opportunities not considered so far. Some of them applied or will for the highly competitive SME Instrument, few of them hopefully will be beneficiary, but what’s remarkable is how the INCAME partners positively impacted on the SMEs attitude, by pushing them to rethink their way of making business, to invest in credibility, in human capital, in intangible assets, translating innovative ideas in market opportunities and successful business models.
