GO-SME

Good practices in SME innovation support

The project summary:

Throughout the EU, the fragmentation of innovation ecosystems and the lack of interconnection between public national and regional agencies appear to be one of the main obstacles to securing support for the most promising SMEs. The GO-SME project responds to the need to provide financial support to SMEs and start-ups for the development of their innovative ideas. The aim of GO-SME is to share the best practices of participating research funding organisations (RFOs) and their mutual learning in designing programmes which would support SMEs and start-ups in an initial assessment of their innovative ideas so that they can progress to more advanced stages of innovation development.

To achieve this aim, a combination of the following activities will be used:

• learning from best practices already applied in support schemes for innovative SMEs and start ups,
• motivation of agencies from widening countries to design innovation support schemes for  SMEs and start-ups,
• cooperation in the setting up of comparable support schemes and sets of selection criteria,
• sharing of best practices in the work with (international) experts and sharing of their pools
• learning from best practices in providing coaching and mentoring services to innovative SMEs and start-ups
• mutual opening up pools of coaches and mentors
• offering of special services to running projects which will be selected as the most promising  by an independent international panel.

The added value of the project rests in its ambition to design national and regional programmes supporting innovative SMEs which could act as a pipeline for the EIC Accelerator and be part of the “plug-in” mechanism. At the same time, it can serve as a pilot project for a possible partnership co-funded from innovation ecosystems in the Horizon Europe programme.

Work packages:

WP1: Management and coordination 
WP2: Sharing best practices and design of national/ regional schemes 
WP3: Support services to beneficiaries
WP4: Ethics requirements

Participating organisations:

1. Technology Agency of the Czech republic  (TA CR), Czech Republic,
2. Service public Wallonie (SPW-EER), Belgium, 
3. Startup Europe Regions Network (SERN), Belgium, 
4. Ettevõtluse Arendamise Sihtasutus (EAS), Estonia,
5. German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany , 
6. National Research and Development Office (NRDI), Hungary
7. Invitalia, Italy, 
8. Agency for Science, Innovation and Technology (MITA), Lithuania,
9. Luxinnovation (LXI), Luxembourg, 
10. Ministry for Research, Innovation and the Co-ordination of Post Covid-19 Strategy (MRIC), Malta, 
11. National Innovation Agency of Portugal (ANI), Portugal,
12. Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic (MoE SR), Slovak Republic
13. Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI), Spain, 
14. Catalan Agency for Business Competitiveness (ACCIÓ), Spain,
15. IESE Business school of University of Navarra (IESE), Spain.
    

Usage of personal data in the project

The purposes and means of the processing of personal data was and will be determined by the data controller, the Technology agency of the Czech Republic having its registered office at Evropská 1692/37, 160 00 Praha 6.

The authorised representative of the controller: Mrs. Alžběta Plachá

• E-mail: alzbeta.placha@tacr.cz
• Phone: +420 725 265 123

TACR team, headed by Alžběta Plachá, clearly declares its intention to protect personal data and expresses its commitment to support all activities related to this. Furthermore, TACR team, together with Mrs. Plachá, ensures that all project workplaces follow the rules determined by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as well as other legal acts issued by the EU or the local law.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101034176.