Periodic Reporting for period 1 - INNOKAM 2019 (Establishing services enhancing the innovation management capacity of SME´s in Hamburg andSchleswig-Holstein)
Période du rapport: 2019-01-01 au 2019-12-31
The Enhanced Innovation Management Services as an additional service of the Enterprise Europe Network offer SMEs the opportunity to evaluate and improve their innovation management capacity. This will lead to improved competitiveness, faster growth and more and stable jobs for the European society.
INNOKAM has been implemented by the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) consortium in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein (EEN-HHSH). EEN-HHSH is established as a well-known regional one-stop-shop for all EU-related enquiries for SMEs and regional stakeholders and formed by the four partners Investitionsbank Schleswig-Holstein (IB.SH) Tutech Innovation GmbH (Tutech), Wirtschaftsförderung und Technologietransfer Schleswig-Holstein (WTSH) and IFB Hamburg (IFB).
For the period 2019 INNOKAM had as its core objective to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of innovation processes in small and medium sized enterprises with significant innovation activities in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein by offering the “Enhanced Innovation Management Consultancy” and the “Key Account Management - (KAM)” services. Aim was to tackle existing lack of innovation management capacity in small and medium sized companies (SME) and support their innovative activities in order to creating economic impact. The guiding principle was to tailor the needs of the identified regional innovators and innovation systems.
In the period 2019 eight companies in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein were funded by the SME instrument comprising six phase 1 beneficiaries and two phase 2 beneficiaries. INNOKAM provided all of these with the KAM services and supported them in a careful needs analysis followed by a thorough coach selection. As the KAMs took care to include coaches from different European countries, three of the coaches are Non-Germans. Six KAM cases were concluded in 2019, two will be continued in 2020/2021.
Enhanced innovation management consultancy was offered to 32 new small and medium companies, six cases from 2017/2018 have been continued. EIMC started with the innovation management capacity assessment followed by the feedback and agreement on an action plan based on specific innovation challenges of the company. During the following months the companies worked on their action plan accompanied by feedback of the innovation management consultants. After roughly one year the process usually was completed with a final meeting to evaluate the achievements of the company and to agree on further steps including use of regular EEN services 15 cases were completed in 2019, 23 services will be continued and completed in 2020/2021.
A measurement of the impact was done by comparison between the first and the final assessment after one year. Result was that all clients could improve their performance. In addition the direct feedback of the companies in the course of the interviews as well the use of further services of the EEN, European funding programmes and additional actions to enhance the competitiveness indicated and underlined the success of the EIMC service.
The regional network of innovation support management services also strengthened and built up new opportunities of collaboration - especially in the environment of clusters and the Smart Specialisation Strategy. Regular meetings with stakeholders were performed during the project period.