South-East European Co-operation of Innovation and Finance Agencies

Closed

SEE-IFA Network aims at strengthening the IFA project partners capacity for effective provision of innovation and technology support to MSME through the establishment of a platform for know-how-transfer and by concrete joint action. It builds on the experiences of the CADSES project GO Network, that focused on credit guarantee organisations in SEE countries. The new SEE-IFA Network project starts from a core group of already existing cooperation partners addressing innovation and technology support to micro, small and medium sized companies (MSME). Innovation and development of technologies are of crucial importance for the competitiveness of companies and regions, building the basis for future growth. But it is a cumbersome and long lasting process with rather high costs. MSME in SEE are facing structural deficits. Thus, stimulating innovative entrepreneurship for MSME with an appropriate range of instruments is one of the most important challenges. The SEE-IFA Network addresses the entire range of deficits, from networking, access to relevant information, support of know-how transfer, training, development of feasibility studies, assessment of frameworks and needs and design of concrete instruments and agencies. The Work Packages range, apart from Project Management and Dissemination, from needs and gap analysis (WP3), assessment of existing instruments and the identification of transferable elements (WP4), identification of funding possibilities and the development of a patent and licence Fund (WP5), establishment of Innovation & Finance Agencies (WP6) to capacity building and training (WP7). The project has a duration of 34 months, unites 11 partners from 10 countries in South East Europe in a joint effort to improve innovation and technology support to MSME.

Medium