InnoBremen3 – Establishing services enhancing the innovation management capacities of SMEs in the Federal State of Bremen

ended

The following proposal addresses the topic “Specific activities in the context of innovation support (Horizon 2020)“, namely the in-depth services enhancing the innovation capacity of SMEs, i.e. “Key Account Management for the SME beneficiaries of the SME Instrument, FTI and FET-Open” and “Services designed to enhance the innovation management capacities of SMEs”. Innovation is a key driver for the success of enterprises, a requirement for their competiveness and thus a precondition for exploiting international opportunities in the Single Market and beyond. Offering growth-oriented business and innovation support services to SMEs is therefore seen as the core task of the Enterprise Europe Network. Although Innovation Management is crucial for SMEs, empiric data has proven that SMEs still show the inability to manage innovation processes efficiently and effectively as the second most important barrier to SME innovation. Enterprise Europe Network Bremen will offer the services - Key Account Management for the SME beneficiaries of the SME Instrument, FTI and FET-Open and - Services designed to enhance the innovation management capacities of SMEs as an integral part of its hub and spoke approach of the Enterprise Europe Networks services addressing the innovation needs of SME’s to establish an Innovation Management System (basis: technical specification CEN/TS-16555-1, published by the European Commission) in the respective enterprises. Beneficiaries of the services will be: 1. Beneficiaries of the SME Instrument, FTI and FET-Open 2. SMEs with significant innovation activities and a high potential for internationalization namely by offering the provision of innovation and technology audits and technology transfer partnering services.