Section 1 - Overview of the progress towards the objectives
EEN OUEST planned to support 12 projects (SP) during the period 2020-2021. In 2020, 5 KAM services have been delivered for 5 SMEs (3 in Bretagne / 2 in Pays de la Loire) = 41% of the global objective. It represents as a whole 15,5 days of support.
These services depend on the number of SMEs accessing to the EIC accelerator program. France is well ranked compared to other European countries but most of our case is located in the regions of Ile-de-France and Auvergne Rhone Alpes. Western regions do not count many successful companies.
This is partly due to the fact the French institutions propose quite efficient programs through “Pôles de compétitivité”, BPI France and Regional Councils. Other countries such as Spain do not have so many incentives and invest much more energy in EU funding.
The EIMC initiative is a key element of the EEN strategy. Talking about “Innovation management” in a company is a good opportunity to tackle a broad scope of subjects: Is there a strategy ? Can I generate new ideas? How do I manage the projects and with who internally and externally? Can I address access to finance issues? Do I secure my innovations? Did I take into account the commercial networks? On that last point, it is the opportunity to link the “innovation strategy” to the “internationalization strategy”, the 2 core businesses of EEN.
However, the action was extremely slowed down by the COVID-19 crisis. The innovation management has clearly not been the priority in SMEs. Despite an interest in the process, companies have had to manage priorities and to focus on their short-term management in order to maintain their activity and to avoid any risk of bankruptcy.A growing and structuring programme for EEN Ouest
26 cases have been managed in 2020-2021. Among them :
• 11 were launched in 2019
• 6 in 2020
• 9 in 2021
The average length of cases is 1 year and 4 months, which is rather long. The average number of days per case in 6.1 days on the 2015-2021 period, and 5.9 for the 2020-21 cases.
Globally the consortium spent 160 days on the WP2 for the 27 clients. split between 75% for CCI Bretagne and 25% in Pays de la Loire with SECO. BDI worked only on WP1-KAM.
In 2020, EEN Ouest devoted 6 advisors to the project (12 in 2019), two of whom achieved 80% of the service packages. All of them have been trained to use the approved “Check innov” diagnosis tool. However, the 3 new Solutions&co advisors discovered and were trained in the use of method and tool in early 2020. They had to build new arguments for companies and stakeholders aiming to revive this action, highly slowed down in the past years, in Pays de la Loire.Promotion actions within EEN COSME WP1 have been significantly reduced due to the lack of audience during the crisis.
CCI Bretagne had however the opportunity to transfer its promotional tool, the serious game “Innovarium” to Rising Sud (EEN Southern France) and Regional agency of Hauts de France in 2021.
