Establishing services enhancing the innovation management capacity of South West France SMEs

Project Information

Magic SWF SMEs

Grant agreement ID: 643311

DOI

10.3030/643311

Project closed

EC signature date 10 December 2014

Start date 1 July 2014

End date 31 December 2014

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 79 186,25

EU contribution

€ 63 349,00

Coordinated by

AGENCE DE DEVELOPPEMENT ET D'INNOVATION AQUITAINE LIMOUSIN POITOU CHARENTES
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Magic SWF SMEs (Establishing services enhancing the innovation management capacity of South West France SMEs)

Reporting period: 2014-07-01 to 2014-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The general objective of the MAGIC SWF SMEs project is to contribute to raise the competitiveness of SMEs from the 4 regions of France covered by this project (Aquitaine, Limousin, Poitou-Charentes and Midi-Pyrénées) by offering support services in the area of innovation management.

The project also contributes to develop more efficient and more effective innovation processes as well as higher quality innovation management capacity assessment and support services.

In the 4 regions, the support services are distributed across two groups of SMEs targeted:
• beneficiaries of the SME Instrument (7 service packages planned)
• SMEs with significant innovation activities and a high potential for internationalization (17 services packages planned).
As the 5 partners don’t have an established tool to assess innovation management in compliance with the CEN/TS 16555-1, IMP3rove is the assessment tool experimented during the period of this project.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The implementation of the project has led the partners to work in close cooperation to define a common methodology and tools. However, the deliverables could not be fully delivered as planned. Only 3 service packages concerning “Enhancing SME innovation management capacity” (Work package 2) were implemented and only one was total delivery.

The main reasons are:
• no SME from the area covered by the project was funded under the SME Instrument, consequently no tailored package could be provided in the work package 1 “Key account management”
• the partners met difficulties in the experimentation of IMP3rove. None of the partners had used IMP3rove before starting the project. The 2-day training was not sufficient to enable a quick implementation of the tool
• the selection of the project took more time than expected and the partners preferred to wait for EASME decision before starting working on the project (about 3 months delay).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Despite these difficulties and delays, the promotion of a new offer of in-depth services enhancing the innovation capacity of SMEs was developed within the SMEs of the 4 regions covered by the project. Following discussions with several SMEs, services packages should be implemented in 2015. Moreover, the partners have improved their qualifications about management of innovation and linked this new offer to the other support services of the Enterprise Europe Network.

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