Enhancing economic impact in SME's in Romania by building innovation management capacity

ended

The objectives of this proposal are the following:Increase efficiency and effectiveness of innovation processes of local beneficiaries of SME instrument and SMEs with significant innovation activities and high potential for internationalisation;Facilitate SME’s access to consulting services for innovation management to address bottlenecks to creation of economic impact;Support innovative SME’s to raise the company’s profitability and competitiveness on international markets.Partners deliver 2 specifically targeted service packages and base their approach on complementary experience and know-how as EEN members.The proposal also includes a general management WP consisting of coordination,communication,dissemination and quality check measures.The WPs dedicated to SMEs consist of preliminary steps (customer identification and approach, meetings), assessment of needs and gaps (specific questionnaires based on CEN/TS16555-1 Standard),assignment of innovation experts and lead coaches and supply of tailored services or facilitation of SME-coach interaction.The proposal addresses challenges such as lack of investment in research, lack of innovation management systems,insufficient supply of innovation services,unaffordable market prices.The scope of the project is to eliminate the barriers for SME innovation by supplying 7 days services.Taking account of the ongoing global crisis, innovation process from idea generation to innovation result but also leadership, management skills and other enabling factors like the ability to cooperate with third parties are considered an essential driver for development and economical recovering. The crisis is depressing investments in innovation as the first costs to be cut and particularly SMEs are concerned by this as they do not have internal resources, nor strategic vision to face the market competition.Methodologies and tools of partners complement each other and help companies manage innovation processes efficiently.