Project description
Providing advisory support to SMEs receiving state funding
FeedS First is a project of the Austrian research promotion agency (FFG), the national agency for industrial research and development, to provide feedback to SMEs, especially those receiving funding for the first time. Until now, feedback was provided to rejected applications, but FFG has found that its experts could lend its expertise in the evaluation of SMEs’ projects, business plans or application. FeedS First project will provide an opportunity for FFG to assess the impact and effectiveness of its professional feedback to companies on a series of issues ranging from project execution to long-term prospects.
Objective
The main objective of this project is to test the effects of feedback provided by FFG experts to R&D projects of small companies and first-timers funded in the “General Programme” of the FFG.
The “General Programme” (https://www.ffg.at/en/general-programme-further-information) of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) is the biggest and longest running R&D funding scheme in Austria.
The focus is on providing feedback for small companies and first timers in the FFG, which are funded in the “General Programme”. These types of companies are selected in this experiment because it was pre-assessed that in these cases feedback would be necessary. The feedback will be offered on the technical concept, the business plan and/or the written application. The effects of this feedback should be measured by the quality of the project execution, quality of future proposals and the success of the project outcomes and company.
So far feedback is only provided if the application is rejected. No feedback is given in case of a positive evaluation result. Only a contract is issued and sometimes there are conditions included in the contract (e.g. for financing statements). So, although these projects are classified as worth funding (à “good projects”) until now they do not receive any information on how to improve. This is what this INNOSUP-application intends to change: Give also feedback to the “good projects” in order to further improve the quality of the projects (e.g. in terms of technical issues or economic aspects) with the expectation that this feedback enhances business performance.
With this experiment FFG wants to test, if giving feedback for small enterprises and enterprises who apply the first time have positive effects on the quality of the project execution, quality of future proposals and the success of the project outcomes and company performance.
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CSA - Coordination and support actionCoordinator
1090 Wien
Austria