The services proposed were based on EEN shared guidelines, manuals, trainings as well as participation in consortium, national an EU Working Groups.
The basic principles in the business innovation service support & coaching mission was to empower SMEs in their efforts towards successful implementation and subsequent commercialisation of their innovation. Thus a combination of EEN soft skills, common assessment tools (namely IMP3ROVE), together with Coaching schemes funded by EU, ensured targeted SMEs to achieve significant results and impact.
Senior EEN experts were appointed as Innovation Experts (mainly EEN staff providing KAM /EIMC services), their main tasks were: implementing an Innovation Intake Check/Needs Analysis dedicated to potential candidates recruited through dedicated promotion activities or merging activities/services related to digitization and acceleration and assessed upon specific criteria such as “strategic and international aspirations, opportunities to grow and capacity to innovate” (for both Type KAM &EIMC activities).
A set of well-identified and committed companies was crucial to ensure the proper completion of the action.
As far as KAM target clients, their identification was possible only after the projects’ evaluations related to the cut off dates in the relevant 12 months period. After having received communication from EC related to the awarded SMEs, a specific client attribution was made by the coordinator to ensure smooth workflow and proper KAM activities.
For KAM activities specific work performed was:
• helping beneficiaries identify and source coaches, evaluating coaching service and capture the benefit to the company, identifying next steps to help the SME on its growth path;
• linking the SME to additional EEN support services available regionally or nationally;
• accompanying SMEs successfully through the Phases of the SME Instrument project and possibly succeed in subsequent phases submission.
For EIMC activities specific work performed was:
• carrying out innovation management capacity assessments using IMP3ROVE methodology during one or more face-to-face meetings with the company; analysing the assessment results and propose a jointly agreed action plan;
• delivering targeted and tailored support according to the action plan, empowering clients to undertake better innovation management and guide to growth;
• providing direct specific support (if available within partner or Host organisation know how) or signpost to specific external expertise in commercial sector, networking, change management or project management.
The project was concluded with 52 started packages started among which 42 were regularly concluded.
Totally, 6 ASOs were achieved thanks to ALPS INN3 activities and 1 more has already been registered in 2020, 1 PA research has been registered and another 5 could be incoming in 2020. These results show an important impact on EEN performance. Furthermore, there was a significant impact at national level which might hopefully lead in the future to a wider impact at international level.
EIMC services definitely represent the starting point of the client Journey. They lead to a better focus EEN offer and design new support actions aimed at enhancing SME growth. KAM services on the other side sometimes represent one of the arrival points of the client journey as in-depth assistance offered through EEN and EIMC package led to successful SME Instrument proposals. KAM services represented then the base for other specific support actions such as access to other EU funds, venture capital funds, access to markets, to talents and infrastructures.
