The results emerging from ACE Creative confirm that investment & international growth opportunities in European creative industries exist. Over 2 years, ACE Creative has worked intensively with 100 ICT-driven creative startups to accelerate their international market access & investment readiness. To date the following impressive results have been tracked:
• Over €11 million euro in cross-border funding has been raised
• 49 participants in ACE Creative accessed new markets, generating €1.9 million new revenue
• 113 corporate clients acquired abroad
• More than 65,000 BtoC & end-user clients acquired
Other less quantifiable results include distribution & commercial partnerships signed with international market players & pilot installations implemented with large corporations.
In order to better understand the different sources of cross-border investment ACE Creative analysed the breakdown. The results of this analysis, presented in figure 2 below, indicate that all kinds of funding sources have been explored & successfully activated, reflecting the diversity of technologies & business models involved in the creative ICT sector & their attractiveness to different types of investors.
To achieve these results ACE Creative ran the intensive programme of activities described above during its 24-month pilot. Progress towards the initial goals & KPIs achieved during the pilot are summarised in Figure 3 below. As highlighted, the KPI of reaching 100 associate partners including at least one in each EU member state is still a work in progress. To address this the platform continues to accept new registrations & targeted efforts to address this shortfall in terms of numbers & geographic reach are being made through partners’ networks, especially those of EBN, CBC & ECBN.
In order to achieve its goal of delivering value-added support for growth to Europe’s ICT-driven creative SMEs by engaging with existing European internationalisation support projects, one of the first tasks ACE Creative carried out was a mapping of existing support services on offer at regional, national & European levels. This was updated in Year 2 to include a rating which fed into the sustainability plan for the ACE Creative Network.
The sustainability plan has also been informed by an online evaluation survey completed by participating companies. This revealed that 87% of companies classify projects like ACE Creative as helpful. Meanwhile, 75% would recommend ACE Creative to other entrepreneurs. Among the service delivery methods face-to-face mentoring & meetings were rated most helpful while the online resource centre received the least favourable reviews. Services where companies would like to see continued or additional support being made available are support in:
o business plan definition;
o finding investors;
o to attend international events;
o the introduction to international markets; &,
o access to technology-developers at universities.
During the final quarter of the project, the consortium focused its efforts on putting in place a feasible action plan to ensure the Network’s continuation in the medium to long-term. These actions have become a part of the Final Operational Plan for the Network & include:
- ACE Creative Light: founding partners have committed to self-funding their continued participation in the cooperation mechanism established in ACE beyond the pilot period.
- EBN will continue to manage the ACE Creative online platform & social media presence & to promote relevant activities of its Creative Industries Special Interest Group to the ACE Creative community & vice versa.
- ECBN will maintain the ACE Creative Network & online platform as key tools in their core activities around facilitating internationalization of SME’s. The platform will be kept alive by fostering further expansion of the service providers as well as by directing SMEs to the platform.
- CBC will continue to promote ACE Creative companies & activities through the CBC media channels. Moreover, they are currently exploring with a major shareholder who was impressed by the quality & scalability of the ACE Creative finalists at CBC if it would be possible to sponsor an ACE Creative Challenge at the event in 2017.
- Showcasing Success Stories: Success stories will continue to be updated & widely disseminated beyond the project funding period.
