Consortium partners did well over the two-years in providing the KAM and EIMC services to their clients. Clients see these as important services that will add value to their plans for growth, being innovative as well as staying competitive within their field. Being given to opportunity to measure your capability against competitors or by being coached to implement efficiently a set of activities within the SME Instrument framework was well received and appreciated. Although consortium partners came across a number of hurdles with applying the IMP³rove tool and methodology in some cases, they managed to find the ways to overcome these and highlight to the client the valuable elements of the process. To this end the strong relationships of the consortium partners with clients is key.
This section is elaborated properly through the PDF final report submitted - please refer to the pdf file.
ENHANCEMENT 2015-16 partners involved in with KAM services focused their efforts over the past two years on supporting their clients to identify weaknesses in the innovation capacities that hinder realisation of growth opportunities and their respective commercial potential. In addition, partners focused on the SME Instrument and the particular opportunities it holds for clients. More specifically partners focused on promoting the opportunities offered by the SME Instrument in the framework of Horizon 2020 and to accompany the client through the submission process or the through the project phase. For the purpose of such task, partners focused on screening the database and identifying the most suitable coaches to support a strong coach-client relationship.
Concerning input fed back to the process we note that consultants were restricted from receiving appropriate replies/feedback from clients in an integrated and workable way. Instead, consultants receive client input only through a reporting module which is not thorough and which doesn’t support the consultants in feeding the action plan with appropriate input.
With regards to enhancing the innovation management capacity of clients, ENHANCEMENT 2015-16 partners focused on identifying the exploiting their innovation potential for export and internationalization. To achieve this, partners focused on providing in-depth identification and analysis on the elements lagging between the innovation capabilities of the clients and their innovation goals. Furthermore, emphasis was placed on encouraging clients to explore their research and technological potential and focus their activities of commercialisation of innovative technologies, products and services to increase their profit.
The results of the concentrated efforts towards enhancing the innovation capacity of suitable consortium clients led to increased competitiveness. This, was achieved as clients had the possibility to benchmark themselves against peers in the same sector in other countries to identify innovation weaknesses and alternative modes of work. This is turn allowed client to proceed with necessary corrective actions and to shape/update their own action plans to stay at the forefront of their field.
