South Eastern European coalition to cultivate SMART SMEs in Europe

ended

The SEE SMART SMEs project addresses three main challenges that European SMEs need to face and overcome in order to keep on being the backbone of the European Union (EU) economy and thus contribute to reach the Europe 2020 Strategy. These challenges are: 1. to govern the paradigms of the new globalised world by re-directing their actions and strategies outside the national borders. This means that SMEs need to be prepared to exploit as much as possible international opportunities in order to enlarge their target market and increase their revenues. This will in turn create new jobs and stimulate EU economic growth. 2. to increase their competitiveness by triggering innovation processes of products, services, methodologies. In a globalised world the target market is broader but, at the same time, the competition is much bigger and in order to survive, old and new (nascent) entrepreneurs, need to be up-to date with respect to innovative technologies and services. 3. to accelerate the adoption of structural reforms of South Eastern European countries as the driving force towards European Union accession aimed at an increased competitiveness for a more dynamic and innovative economy. The proposed action aims at concretely contributing to overcome these defies by: 1. proposing a consortium which will foster cooperation between European Union countries (Austria and Italy) and SEE, opening-up new target market areas for EU entrepreneurs. The economy of South Eastern European countries is growing, business opportunities in the area are increasing while structural reforms are being adopted as the driving force towards European Union accession. 2. targeting specifically those SMEs/new entrepreneurs that would like to do an on-the-job-training abroad to primarily experience innovative processes to improve their performance and those who want to venture into new markets or wish to strengthen/expand their international relations/export opportunities.