Final Report Summary - SMART (Services for SMEs in collaborative transport research projects) Executive summary: The aim of SMART project is to offer support to organisations operating in the surface transport sector in being involved in Research and technology development (RTD) projects at European level, through networking and partnership opportunities, as well as providing useful information and tools to enhance their active participation in RTD project. SMART provides services to Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for encouraging their participation in RTD research projects and increase collaboration opportunities between SMEs and other stakeholders, mainly through: - connecting clusters of transport sector in different European countries; - training on European Union (EU) funding mechanisms; - facilitating networking opportunities and partnerships creation among all stakeholders of the transport sector (using the metacluster approach); - addressing SMEs research capabilities / needs; - facilitating the creation of consortium with large organisations in projects led by SMEs; - supporting SMEs in submitting proposals for own project ideas; - creating a nurturing environment for transnational research projects. Project context and objectives: During the project duration, the SMART consortium has developed a web portal that is intended the main channel to disseminate the project objectives and to offer all SMART services to the registered organisations. The homepage provides a short description about the project services and opportunities offered to the visitors and / or registered users. The page includes a central image where the main services are highlighted to encourage visitors to navigate into the different sections and to be registered in the database of organisations. Regional cluster, large organisations, SMEs, public and private research centres are some of the members involved in the SMART community benefiting of its network and services. At the end of the project the following numbers are available in the SMART website: - above 15 000 visitors to SMART portal; - 20 regional clusters linked to SMART (MoU signed) and receiving support; - 280 SMEs registered and pre-classified in the online DB; - 82 Large organisations registered in the online database. Other results achieved thanks to dissemination actions and offline support are: - ten intra-cluster events were organised; - the SMART International workshops was held in Reykjavik (Iceland), Bilbao (Spain) and Bergamo (Italy); - 61 project ideas flourished within the SMART community; - 14 project led by SMEs have been submitted during the project; - 33 SMEs joined proposals led by other organisations. Project results: not applicable Potential Impact: The SMART website is the main windows to offer project services, and keep contact with registered user. SMART website is also a repository of interesting information (DBs of organisations, DB of funding opportunities, tools, etc.) that will remain after the project end to exploit the results and to keep the community alive and active. The results achieved during the project where possible thanks to the collaboration of SMART consortium. The SMART consortium comprises a wide range of stakeholders related to surface transport: private technology transfer companies, regional SMEs clusters, public innovation agencies, and large enterprises linked to regional clusters. The main lessons learnt at the end of the project, can be summarised in the following points: - The organisation of online events (webinars) have been confirmed to be an excellent idea to involve organisations in the project activities. The participation to webinars require less effort than to move to an specific location to attend an event related to a project, specially SMEs usually do not have large budget to attend to international events. International events, in fact, are difficult to attract SMEs, as far as SMEs have strict budget and time constraints. In such sense, it is a good idea to merge international brokerage events in events already attracting several SMEs (trade fairs) to be sure to reach a broad audience. - SMEs in surface transport show high degree of innovativeness in terms of research project ideas. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to match such project ideas with European Commission (EC) specific calls. This is due mainly to the fact that most EC calls are with a top-down approach (definition of topics where projects needs to be submitted), and the few bottom up schemes (such as research for SMEs) are not useful for innovative SMEs that would like to make use of internal research capacities. To improve SMEs possibilities in participating to European Surface Transport research, bottom up schemes should be set up for SMEs within the specific transport area. - On line collaborative tools and networks (as SMART) have proof to be very effective and efficient to share ideas and projects, but there is room for improvement as follows: (i) on one hand, such tools should be used not only for participating to EU funded research, but more broadly to foster open innovation, meaning providing services to directly match demand and offer of innovation; (ii) the on line tools will support SMEs in proposing ideas and merging in projects, but as described in precedent point, only the availability of funding schemes with a wider scope (bottom up approach) could put such SMEs in the position to bring forward ideas through European funding. - It is quite difficult, in the surface transport sector, to enter in closed circuits of large organisations coordinating the participation to EU funding programmes and answering to specific topics of the work programme: in such sense, the activity of generating interest in large enterprises in involving SMEs in their project in SMART has been quite challenging and, if no changes in the funding scheme rules of EC will happen (such as defining a minimum budget for SMEs, or opening targeted SMEs specific schemes on transport) it will be very difficult to for SMEs to access such networks in order to supply competences / services within Research and development (R&D) projects. - Local activities as training in local language, as well as other focused activities, to organisations coming from the same country, have been very effective as sometime the English language seems to be a barrier?when the organisations approach for first time specific topics: as funding opportunities, schemes and administrative procedure to present a proposal under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). - Project partners are already aware that one of the societal challenges of the next EC FP 'Horizon 2020', is smart, green and integrated transport, it is an strong point for the exploitation of SMART results, as it confirms that the topics and objectives of the project are in trend with the up-coming research interest of the EC. Specific actions need to be undertaken by SMART to be ready to serve SMEs in the future 'Horizon 2020'. List of websites: www.smartransport.eu
