INTERREG MINIEUROPE - FIRST BROCHURE

Mainstreaming Innovative Instruments for SME development in Europe

MISSION, WORK & TOOLS

When you ask entrepreneurs about their opinion of a public body, they might say that public bodies make it more difficult to run their businesses. Working for a regional government myself, I have to admit that this is true sometimes, because we have the task to make rules and regulations. However, as regional governments we are also very proud of and dedicated to the businesses in our region! Therefore, we put great efforts in improving the entrepreneurial climate and infrastructure. In Mini Europe, 8 European regions have joined forces to enlarge the entrepreneurs’ possibilities to innovate and to stimulate the start up of new companies. The participating regions are importing and exporting each other’s good practices. For example, Valencia is importing the financial scheme of Veneto to boost innovation among SME’s. Several partners are importing the Summer Design Office from Sweden and the cluster development programs from NorthWest England and Észak-Alföld (HU). With the distribution of this brochure we hope to enlarge this fruitful exchange of good practices. So, please, don’t hesitate to contact us, when you are interested to know more!

Andries Greiner Deputy Queen’s Commissioner Province of Flevoland (NL) Chairman of the Mini Europe Monitoring Board

PROJECT

MINI EUROPE aims to exchange and improve

regional policies in

SME development, focusing on the main themes of providing infrastructure

for

innovation

to

SMEs and promoting

entrepreneurship. In particular, it addresses the issues of increasing involvement of under-represented groups (like minorities, disabled people, women) in entrepreneurship.

Most of the activities in this project are carried out through

networking:

bringing together and capitalising their methods and experiences, all partners can strongly improve their performance in this field. Mini Europe will collect existing

good practice in SME support in the partner regions and from

relevant Interreg projects in two catalogues of good practices.

innovation competitiveness

cooperation clusters

promoting entrepreneurship networking

good practice financial instruments

PARTNERSHIP

The MINI EUROPE partnership combines the experience of 9 organisations in 8 regions:

Province of Flevoland (Netherlands) Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council (North West of England - UK) Észak-Alföld Regional Development Agency (Hungary) Maramureş County Council (Romania) Almi Företagspartner Mitt AB (Sweden) Institute for SME Industrial Firms of the Valencian Govt. (Spain) Patras Science Park S.A (Western Greece) Veneto Region and Veneto Innovazione (Italy)

All partners of Mini Europe are public authorities or Regional bodies responsible for supporting SMEs development in their Region. Each of them brings relevant experiences and practices in this field of action to be shared with the other partners.

All partners have the competence and authority to implement the good practices identified and developed throughout the project, and they are in the position to involve the relevant network of actors in their region in this field.

GOOD PRACTICES

The overall objective of MINI EUROPE is to elaborate through its international partnership a set of regional political instruments and strategies to sustain the development of Small and Medium Enterprises, increase their capacity for innovation and technological transfer with universities and knowledge institutes, and to initiate its implementation in the partner regions.

The first stage of the project has been devoted to mapping and then compiling two Catalogues of good practices documenting existing good practices in the partner regions and results from relevant projects.

@WORK

www.interreg-minieurope.com

The MINI EUROPE website is the dynamic working space where partners can publish posts, interviews, video, to

links

better

in

order

explain

their

practices. The contents are then sorted by region and by category to facilitate the

knowledge

transfer.

Moreover good practices have been classified in six main thematic areas.

CLUSTERS

Good practices that focus on clusters consist of economic development programs, cluster development schemes, models that consider the physical infrastructure requirements of a cluster, specific programmes to foster and support the development of productive clusters and SMEs networks.

These Policies seek to create the proper framework to boost the development of productive clusters and identify the necessary infrastructure for effective SME development within them, creating the appropriate milieu favourable to innovation.

EXTENDING ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The objective of this group of good practices is exchanging and developing methods to attract more people to entrepreneurship, especially from under represented groups. The partners offer integrated support to socially less favoured groups, foster entrepreneurial attitudes and skills for young people, encourage local people and residents in deprived areas to create their own business or help different types of business starters to start up their own businesses or to expand their already existing companies.

FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS

The primary purpose of several of the partners is to support micro and small sized enterprises in innovative initiatives. This is the reason why some partners’ purpose is supporting micro and small sized enterprises in innovative initiatives and motivating supply and demand in the field of innovation services, decreasing the cost of innovative investments, enhancing the access to the credit system for SMEs and launching a venture capital fund for start-ups and companies at an early stage.

INTERNATIONALISATION It is important to exploit economic relations between different countries at national and local level, in order to encourage and promote the inclusion of SMEs in the trade relations between different countries. For instance initiatives have been developed to support networking, within the crossborder regions bringing together chambers of commerce (representing the business environment), public regional authorities (representing the public environment) and universities (representing the academic environment) to boost international relationship.

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

Consistent relationships between SMEs and knowledge institutes are fundamental to boosting innovation.

To this goal, some partners implemented schemes to facilitate the commercialisation of academic research results. Others focus on practices aiming to foster the cooperation among SMEs, research and innovation centres and technology providers.

SUPPORT FOR INNOVATION

Innovation is at the heart of the project. From facilitating the access of SMEs to added value services, to the introduction of design into traditional companies, or the incorporation of online training systems which allow them to better access finance, innovation can be seen throughout the project as a tool for stimulating SME development.

LEARNING CYCLE

The partners are strongly engaged in

experience transfers,

bilateral

matching a partner

‘exporting’ a specific good practise with a partner ‘importing’ it. Visits, training, video conferences will allow the partner regions to deepen the practices and mainstreaming innovative instruments for SME development.

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CONTACTS

Mini Europe is coordinated by:

Province of Flevoland Programme Management Europe P.O.Box 55 -8200 AB Lelystad The Netherlands For details about the Mini Europe project contact :

Bob Pels Programme Manager European Territorial Cooperation Phone: +31 (0) 320 265 474 e-mail: bob.pels@flevoland.nl or

Karin Maatje Project Manager Interreg Phone: +31 (0) 320 265 745 e-mail: karin.maatje@flevoland.nl

INTERREG IVC

Interregional Cooperation Programme INTERREG IVC, financed by the European Union’s Regional The

Development Fund, helps Regions of Europe work together to share experience and good practice in the areas of innovation, the knowledge economy, the enviroment and risk prevention. EUR 302 million is available for project funding but, more than that, a wealth of knowledge and potential solutions are also on hand for regional policy-makers.

For more info about the programme: www.interreg4c.eu

The views expressed in this document, as well as the information included in it, do not necessary reflect the opinion or position of the Managing Authority and in no way commits the institution.

Made by

MINI EUROPE is a project co-financed by the ERDF Made possible by the INTERREG IVC