During INNMADRIMASD 4, 43 new SME-Instrument beneficiaries from the Madrid region (32 Phase 1 and 11 Phase 2), were contacted and visited, and the KAMs helped to develop their coaching activities and to take advantage of the rest of the services available in the innovation ecosystem. Including the cases that were still open from previous programs, a total of 67 companies were supported by the KAM service in 2019, while since the pilot phase in 2014 the partners have managed a grand total of 198 cases.
The companies’ receptivity to the service and the coaches assigned has been very positive, and all of them had a coach assigned at the end of 2019, except 2: one had not been assigned the coach yet while the other one rejected the coaching.
In addition, the partners continued the supporting work by organizing workshops for participants in the SME Instrument, public presentations of the programme addressed to experts, training activities accessible to all beneficiaries, and promoting our guide for writing SME Instrument proposals.
Second, 18 innovative companies have requested the provision of EIMC services, while at present 13 services have been fully delivered while the other 5 are still ongoing. For each company, a first interview was carried out to explain the benefits of the service and the process and methodology that would be used, then a diagnostic and a benchmarking were carried out, their results were summarized in a written report and, finally, an action plan based on the report was proposed and discussed with each beneficiary.
On the other hand, continuing the work of previous projects, several Business Acceleration Services were provided to all companies, while those having received the 'Seal of Excellence' had the opportunity to access training and personalised advice by the Network partners on funding opportunities to develop their projects, apart from the financial support offered by the Spanish Ministry of Economy (CDTI).
Finally, coordination between the consortium partners has been very effective. All partners and their technical staff has been working in the project since 2014, while in 2019 a new KAM joined the team. The coach selection and matching process, and the search for new coaches, are done combining different types of sources, and the quality of the selection process has improved significantly year after year.
