WP2 (MITA) – Sharing best practices and design of national/regional schemes
The objective of this WP is to share the best practices while nominating and preparing national and regional programmes focused on supporting SMEs and start-ups. Special focus will be given to specific criteria of the programmes (e.g.programme setting, evaluation criteria).
At the end of the project, each RFO will present benefits of this project to its functioning with regards to the outcome of the call (how was the new/modified scheme perceived by the applicants, selection procedures, etc.) and use of additional service. Organisation of 2 Consortium workshops (Workshop 1 and Workshop 3) in order to exchange information and best practices on the design and specific needs of the programmes at national/regional levels. Organisation of many conference calls around different topics (mutual learning around call text, call procedure, selection of experts, work with experts,etc.) Part of this WP will be communication and dissemination of the CSA project results and sustainability of the action.
Task 2.1 Sharing best practice – support to SMEs on EU level (SME Instrument phase 1 from H2020), SME support from national/regional levels (MITA)
The aim of this task is to exchange each partner’s best practices in supporting SMEs and start-ups. The partners of this consortium differ at numerous levels: depth of experience with SME support at the EU level and at the national level, type of source of funding they work with etc. Specifically, some of the partners have direct experience with support to SME Instrument phase 1 Seal of Excellence holders. Some partners own their funding programmes, whereas others do not have any yet. All types of experience will be a valuable part of the mutual learning between the consortium members.
The consortium will learn from best practices of the no longer existing SME Instrument phase 1 which proved to be very successful on EU level. Various reports as well as experience from implementation of the projects will be taken into account.
RESULTS
Task 2.2 Design of national/regional schemes (NRDI)
Based on exchange of best practices in Task 2.1, the partners will design/modify their own schemes supporting SMEs and start-ups. Each partner will reflect the best practise and lessons learned in the national/regional scheme and call for proposals according to their own consideration (what can be reflected in one country may not be possible in another because of legislation, cultural aspects, etc.). Call for proposals, evaluation of proposals, selection and funding of the successful best projects will be done by each partner individually according their national criteria. However the aim of the consortium is to have quite similar schemes, with the same target group and similar evaluation criteria.
RESULTS
Task 2.3 Communication, exploitation and dissemination of the results (of CSA project) (DLR)
The objective of this task is to facilitate an efficient communication within the consortium and to the innovation landscape stakeholders, and to the third parties to promote and disseminate information about the planned calls and results of this CSA project. The task will contain 3 categories of activities:
communication activities,
promotion of individual, newly designed calls,
dissemination and exploitation of the CSA project results.
Detailed roadmap of communication will be drafted in the Plan for the dissemination and exploitation of project's results (D2.3). Communication will maximize the impact of the project results. An ambition of this task is to disseminate information about national/ regional schemes supporting SMEs and start-ups that this CSA project helped to launch/modify.
RESULTS
Task 2.4 Sustainability – modification of the schemes according to “plug – in” criteria (TA CR)
The aim of this task is to develop schemes that will be able to fulfill the criteria for the EIC Accelerator “plug – in” certification. All partners of the consortium will be cooperating in this task because they would like to fill-in the gap on the subsidy landscape and create a scheme that could become a pipeline of interesting projects for EIC Accelerator. Shall the EC “plug – in” criteria be known within the timing of Workshop 2 (part of Task 3.3), the project partners will discuss them with the aim of schemes modification/updates. The deliverable of this task will be a List of national/regional schemes.