Financial instruments have long been important economic development policy measures in many countries. The European Commission has increasingly emphasized the role that financial instruments can play in the delivery of SMEs support. The governance of financial instruments is very much context-driven; nevertheless, in all cases, managing authorities and innovation agencies are involved in the design, managing and implementation of the financial instruments.
Recognizing that Financial Instruments are public services for SMEs (designed and offered by Innovation and Funding Agencies), design approaches can help the Innovation Agencies offer better and user-friendlier financial instruments and increase the impact of the funds as well as the satisfaction of the SMEs. In this respect, the purpose of the SmartFI project was to promote the sharing of good practices for the construction of better financial instruments from the users’ perspective.
SmartFI project attempted to interlink the effectiveness of a financial instrument with the actual needs of the final user. Under this perspective, a certain process was developed, based on Design Thinking methodology, and tested in real challenges. Through the implementation of the Pilot Actions in all 3 partner regions, interesting key insights in relation to the effectiveness of designing and managing financial instruments, as well as to their significant role in the development of the SMEs were derived, which are summarized below:
- Lack of collected and organised information regarding the available FIs, especially for start-ups.
- Public authorities need to understand the needs of the start-ups.
- Immature local ecosystems with no interaction due to stakeholders’ introversion.
- High level of bureaucracy makes the design of friendly Financial Instruments difficult and also discourages SMEs in going after a FI.
- Networking and interaction between investors, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders is really important.
- Boosting entrepreneurial culture at every level of education is needed to better prepare people with different educational and professional backgrounds to the use of financial instruments.
- Networking the active and potential business angels in the region is seen as a way to improve private co-financing in publicly supported financial instruments for start-ups.
