1. Key account management for SME Instrument beneficiaries: This target group is the SMEs who are the beneficiaries of the SME Instrument, FTI and FET-Open. The SMEs who will be the beneficiaries of the SME Instrument, FTI and FET-Open under Horizon 2020 will be forwarded to us through the related department of EC. SMEntorEGE will aim to provide 7-day service package of Key Account Management services to 5 SMEs. To realize the full target of the project, we have mainly focused on the proposed services in the region. Despite all our joint effort in collaboration of EEN Consortium members, based on our knowledge, but there is no winning EIC pilot from our region yet.
2. Enhancing SMEs’ innovation management capacity: This target group is SMEs who have a high innovation and internationalization potential. The SMEs for this target group will be selected among approximately the 100 companies which have developed and submitted at least one innovation project to the Regional and National Turkish Scientific and Technological Council (TUBITAK) or Directorship for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (KOSGEB) for obtaining R&D financial support between the years 2012 and 2017 in the region but have failed or developed a contracted project with universities. Therefore, the initial target group of SMEs will be those 100 companies who are relatively familiar with the concept of innovation, have the intention to improve their capabilities and possess some infrastructure to support this ambition. 60 SMEs who wish to increase efficiency and effectiveness of their investment in R&D, innovation and internalization will be selected from this initial group based on the selection criteria specified in the Work Package descriptions and priority will be given to those with higher innovation capacity and experience. Therefore, the project will aim to provide a 7-day service package of Enhancing SMEs’ innovation management capacity services to 60 SMEs. Under WP2, all targets were realized despite the issues discussed above from WP1. Total 60 companies targeted to provide EIMC services and this has been 100% realized and 60 companies received EIMC services at the end. All cases closed in the reporting period.
As we have observed formerly, companies are not confident about preparing an EIC proposal due to lack of project management skills, confidences, not awareness of TRL level of their projects, and language barrier. In order to solve these problems, in close collaboration with EEN, face to face meetings were organized with those companies, success stories shared and experience sharing sessions were organized. In addition to this, social media was used to increase awareness and sharing success stories. In addition, we have set up project reviewing meetings with the companies to increase the level of project applications from phase 1 to phase 2. Due to economic and political issues countrywide, it was very difficult to motivate companies for R&D and innovation activities. For that reason, it required more time to convince companies for innovation assessment and activities compare to previous periods.
