It is well-known that SMEs are the real driver for economic growth and job creation. The 20,8 million European SMEs produce more than a half of EU28 GDP. However scarcity of public resources at regional, national and European levels implies to focus our effort on the most promising SMEs, the ones with the highest potential. That is why, AcceleGreat project will dedicated its action to high potential SMEs. The AcceleGreat project (SME GROWTH) proposal aims at sharing experiences of the three innovation agencies composing the consortium: ARII-PACA from France, Enterprise Flanders & IWT from Belgium and MISET from Finland. As the “shared challenge” identified by the consortium is the way to accelerate growth of high potential enterprises, the main objective is to understand how agencies can provide a better innovation support to this kind of enterprises.
This issue was already underlined in 2009 by the Commission Staff Working Document “Making public support for innovation in the EU more effective”. Indeed, “Specific needs of innovative enterprises with high growth potential” was listed among the most important challenges faced by institutional stakeholders. There is a real need of sharing experience in this domain to answer the specific requirements of high potential enterprises. Therefore, different types of tools will be investigated. The study will start at a macro to finish at a micro point of view. First, different process of acceleration will be examined: incubators, clusters and accelerators. We want to know how these structures can help high potential enterprises – or gazelles – to grow faster and stronger. Project Partners want to share best practices on how they work with these structures, how they can help them to identify real gazelles. The different steps of development of high potential enterprises in each structure will be studied by the consortium. Then, we will focus on concrete mechanisms implemented by these structures to help enterprises to access funds. For instance, a system of fundraising (regional fund or crowdfunding) supported by a Regional agency and implemented by a Regional authority will be studied to understand how this best practice can be shared. Finally, special features of each innovation agencies will be analysed.
Studying these different dimensions will allow the consortium to produce a comprehensive and transversal Design Options Paper (DOP) that will be of great interest for European stakeholders. The DOP on this specific topic targeting only high potential enterprises will guide other agencies wishing to implement new policies.
Conclusion : Acceleration is becoming throughout the world and Europe the subject that will concentrate the attention of most of the incubation ecosystems. It is already the case in many countries like Germany, France, UK, The Netherlands, Belgium and Nordic countries quite advanced in the organization of acceleration. The public institutions cannot ignore any more that acceleration (although the business model for acceleration is still fragile) is already the next step to support the growth of High Potential SMEs. The question remains: how public institutions could cope with a rapidly changing landscape of SME support? Regional authorities cannot stay outside the debate and the evolution of acceleration. There are several steps that are mandatory to fulfill that we tried to cover through this paper: 1) Understanding acceleration and engineer acceleration 2) Acceleration is a matter of people rather than money (although money is still one of the keys to a successful process) 3) A public policy always need an evaluation. This document was build using the regional experience of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Flanders and Mikkeli and, with simple methodological approaches, by confronting experience in SME support as well as the most recent experience in SME acceleration of each regions. Methodology used was experience sharing during meetings but also brainstorming session to determine the best profiles for KAM or the best indicators according to the type of reporting needed. The consortium that builds this document is ready to share the content with other region facing the same issues regarding SME acceleration.
