Promoting STARTups and SMEs as the BEST place to work through workplace innovation

Start at Best, an H2020 funded project, drawing from the startups that initiated the trend of Workplace Innovation, aims to contribute to the development of a European-led new wave of workplace innovation among SMEs, and especially micro-firms and small companies that can take advantage of the disruption in this area being created by startups and adopt their innovative behaviour and attitude. This will result in promoting innovative workplace models, unconventional products and solutions and an enhanced understanding of workers need making possible by wider participation of stakeholders in the innovation process.

With the objectives of:

• Raising the visibility and awareness of SMEs and micro-firms towards the relevance of workplace innovation for business competitiveness;
• Providing an added-value set of startup-inspired cases of workplace innovation;
• Launching open calls (3 national level calls and 1 EU level) that can help spark, fund and expand new original, feasible, competitive and socially impactful workplace innovations;
• And communicating the results at a wide level and towards other sectors and regions;

Start at Best comes at a critical time to inspire EU organisations to embrace Workplace Innovation practices, ensure the enhancement of business competitivity and get ready for the next industrial revolution that is already ongoing. Therefore, to accomplish our main goal (of providing services for raising small businesses aware of the importance of workplace innovation) we have:

1) Developed a repository of case studies. Several key tasks have been undertaken to ensure the identification and linking with regional, national and international organisations, projects and initiatives active in WPI, including EU networks and support agencies for SMEs. In observation of the pilot on Open Research Data in Horizon 2020, ad-hoc relevant business innovation practices have been translated into case studies, and in concomitance with the development of the web site, the database of WPI is stored and disseminated at https://startatbest.eu.

2) Focussed on services related to the designation and implementation of calls at EU and National level, regarding workplace innovation for small-scale projects. Calls for SME and micro-firms have been designed, drafted and published with WPI as the central subject of the action. The organisation and promotion of the calls for ideas have been revised with only online activities possible in light of recent events related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The network of SERN and the partners have proven extremely useful for dissemination activities, making good use of digital and social media.

3) Guaranteed the support and communication services for promoting the above-mentioned initiative and assure the replication of successful initiatives across other European regions and countries. Results have been achieved in developing channels specifically dedicated to the communication of the project, through social networks and other creative ICT means, in order to promote the calls and ensure that it reaches its pertinent audience, as well as other project stakeholders. Events such as the participation from Start at Best at the European Week of Regions and Cities is a must as they have great potential.

Since the beginning of the project in June 2019, Start at Best fulfilled and achieved the following tasks and results:

• Identification and linking with regional, national and international initiatives and projects;
• Development of website, social networks and other creative activities specifically dedicated to the project;
• Identification of relevant business innovation practices as case-studies and database where WPI case studies can be stored and disseminated;
• List of partner/stakeholder organisations published on the website;
• Repository of Case Studies, web-accessible and searchable;
• Design, draft and promotion of calls for proposals;
• Organization and promotion of the calls for proposals and assurance of the financial support of their realisation;
• Publication of the Call for Proposals;
• Development of a Workplace Innovation expert’s database;
• Monitoring of the 3rd parties projects.

By raising awareness, collecting, analyzing, enhancing, funding, disseminating and promoting state-of-the-art knowledge on workplace innovation, Start at Best project will contribute to the realization of part of the Innovation Union’s ambitions, as the competitiveness of EU companies, especially SMEs, is fostered using innovative workplace models. Many of the new workplace models focus on more sustainable ways of production and consumption, a higher resource and energy efficiency, closing material loops, producing sustainable products and services, thereby addressing new markets, improve cost efficiency, creating new jobs, and underpinning profitability. A particular group of workplace innovations relies on the valorisation of new ICT developments. Also, the practical functioning of successful workplace innovation relies to a significant extent on adequate ICT support tools. In an era in which many EU Member States start to come to grips with the consequences of the recent economic and financial crisis, and that will have to address the upcoming economic distress that will result from the recent COVID19 outbreak, Start at Best aims to promote workplace innovations that may spark new opportunities for job creation, new skills development and in the end reduce poverty as well. Yet one of the important conditions is that the insights and lessons learned on workplace innovation and application are widely known and shared providing a wealth increasing leverage effect both in geographic scale and over time.

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Start-at-best (Promoting STARTups and SMEs as the BEST place to work through workplace innovation)

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