Project description
Lending Italian SMEs a helping hand
Innovation management is important to the success of SMEs. It can help them maintain and enhance their competitiveness and contribute to Europe’s economic development. While the benefits are profound, not all SMEs are able to adequately develop their own internal innovative systems and therefore require support. The EU-funded I-KAM2EU project set out to do just this, provide SMEs with structured support for the development and maintenance of their internal innovation management system. The support includes two services: enhancing innovation management capacity services and the key account management service, both helping SMEs reach their innovation potential. I-KAM2EU is a proposal by the Enterprise Europe Network consortium for the three Italian regions Marche, Tuscany and Umbria.
Objective
The proposal aims at improving the innovation management capacity of SMEs to enhance their growth, competitiveness and cross-border partnerships.
I-KAM2EU is the proposal by SME2EU (the Enterprise Europe Network consortium for the three Italian regions Marche, Tuscany and Umbria) to provide in its area in 2019 two services continuing the ongoing positive experience in the years 2015-2018.
1) Key Account Management (KAM) service, reserved to SME beneficiaries of SME Instrument, Fast Track to Innovation and Future and Emerging Technologies Open calls of Horizon 2020, in the three Italian regions covered by the proposal. I-KAM2EU will provide 14 KAM services in 2019. The effective number of KAMs will be determined by the real number of beneficiaries in the three regions. The consortium will active a pool of 8 people to assess the SME’s needs, to support the choice of a right coach and to moderating the coach-client relationship, ensuring that beneficiary receives the most appropriate support services which enhance the probability of a successful and sustainable exploitation of its innovation project.
2) Enhancing SME’s Innovation Management Capacity (EIMC) for innovating SMEs, targeted to SMEs with significant innovation activities and with concrete potential for international growth, about product, process, service or business model innovation. I-KAM2EU will provide 27 EIMC services in 2019 to SMEs selected through a structured procedure. The consortium will active a pool of 14 people, able to use IMPR3rove (for most structured SMEs) and/or Innovation Health Check (for less structured SMEs) tools to assess the SME’s current status of the innovation management system, to make a gap analysis, to define an action plan, to monitor it and to check improvements and impacts.
Programme(s)
- H2020-EU.2.3. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
CSA - Coordination and support actionCoordinator
50122 FIRENZE
Italy