Central Baltic Startup Springboard

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Central Baltic region has a great opportunity to strengthen its position as a globally competitive center of knowledge-intensive, born global startups aiming for rapid growth. The potential leans on high quality university education, wide selection of entrepreneurship studies and a network of support organisations. However, the international startup scene has become more competitive, thus creating a need to strengthen the regional approach through joint teams and processes. A cross-border business acceleration process is needed to be able to offer comparable value to compete with currently stronger startup regions. The Springboard project supports the development of new joint and cooperative knowledge-intensive startups springing up of the shared smart specialization strengths of the participating regions (ICT, cleantech, healthtech and biotech). The challenge of having gaps in the entrepreneurial path from the universities to existing business incubators and accelerators will be targeted by also addressing the unused possibilities of internationalisation in the early stage of entrepreneurship. Taking into account the small home market of the region, we need common tools to be able to create globally competitive businesses. The project provides its target group (PhD and degree students, researchers, recent graduates and highly educated expats) a smooth and supported path towards entrepreneurship. The consortium consists of 6 partners covering three Central Baltic countries. Partners from Turku (FI), Tallinn (EE) and Riga (LV) implement three joint 10-week business acceleration programs, coaching for the most potential teams and targeted matchmaking activities for already established early-stage companies. By combining expertise across borders, it is easier to find potential business ideas, establish globally competitive joint teams with versatile know-how and experience, and find a group of potential “CB startup stars” to coach towards success.

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