The project involved three partners of the Enterprise Europe Network South West France consortium which covers two regions (Nouvelle-Aquitaine and part West of Occitanie).
The general objective was to contribute to raise the competitiveness of SMEs from the two regions by offering support services in the area of innovation management. The project has also contributed to develop more efficient and more effective innovation processes and higher quality innovation management capacity assessment and support services.
The support has been delivered as service packages of 7-10 days to 2 groups of SMEs:
a) Beneficiaries of the SME Instrument of Horizon 2020: to enhance the probability of a successful exploitation of the innovation project results and lead to the sustainable growth of the beneficiary beyond the participation in Horizon 2020. Partners pinpointed weaknesses in the innovation capacities of the beneficiary, selected suitable coaches to address the identified weaknesses and monitored the coach-client relationship and to support the beneficiary through the SME instrument project
b) SMEs with significant innovation activities and a high potential for internationalisation: to enhance their innovation management capacities to be able to gain new international markets and leaderships. The support service consisted in an in-depth innovation assessment in order to develop and implement a tailored action plan to improve the SMEs capacity to manage innovation processes. The partners used three dedicated assessment tools: IMP3rove and Check’Innov, Innovation Way.
The project lasted 12 months and provided 68 support service packages.
