Towards a more open and innovative Brussels’ economy

Towards a more open and innovative Brussels’ economy

Interview with Mrs Isabelle GRIPPA, CEO of hub.brussels

Could you please tell us about the missions and services of hub.brussels? hub.brussels is the Brussels agency for business support. It offers a wide array of free advice, services and tools to ensure the success of entrepreneurial projects, with challenges ranging from setting up a legal entity to finding the right funding sources. hub.brussels also supports businesses wishing to export beyond the country’s borders, just as it promotes foreign investment in Brussels. For these services, we can count on our network of economic and commercial officers that provide solid support for our companies abroad, covering more than 140 countries from 90 offices.

Our team of 320 people works hard to make innovation and entrepreneurship accessible to people in Brussels, and to create an urban economy capable of supporting innovation, internationalization and socio-economic impact.

What is hub.brussels approach toward innovation? Our agency leverages on unique characteristics of the Brussels Capital-Region to support the sustainable growth of the economy: Brussels is a strong innovator and its innovation score increases with the years. Specific strengths include a high number of international scientific co-publications, many innovative SMEs innovating in-house and a high ratio of people with tertiary education. Smart specialisation domains are structured around clusters of companies, industry and academia, coordinated and animated by hub.brussels. They focus on the audiovisual field, sustainable construction, circular economy, lifetech, ICT and tourism/events/ cultural sectors.

Other initiatives stimulating innovation include starters accelerators (green businesses and medical devices/e-health solutions), calls for projects such as Open Soon for innovative retail, support to the digitalisation of enterprises and the diffusion of social economy practices in the more traditional economy. These programmes are run by hub.brussels and designed in collaboration with other public and private initiatives.

Are innovation and internationalisation strongly connected in Brussels? The regional and national markets being small, it is natural for Brussels’ enterprises to focus on international markets from very early on. For this, we can count on Brussels’ DNA as European capital: Brussels-based companies are keen to use European funds and programmes, and convinced that their research and business partners are located in Europe and beyond.

These companies - as any other legal entity based in Brussels - can rely on the support of the National Contact Point (NCP) Brussels to identify the right European R&D funding scheme under the current Horizon2020 programme. This programme is designed to further boost their R&D activities, carried out at international level with European partners. To ease the setting up of R&D proposals under the programme, the NCP Brussels’ team, part of

hub.brussels, provides guidance on the most suitable and available calls for proposals, on how to develop the content of the proposal and the budget against evaluation criteria etc. Their guidance lasts throughout the duration of the project.

Should a company be looking for qualified partners abroad to activate collaborative innovation, technology or know-how transfer, another set of services is provided by Enterprise Europe Brussels (EEB), a unique public-private consortium between hub.brussels and the Brussels’ chamber of commerce BECI. The EEB advisors are connected to over 60 countries. They are experts in their respective domains which allows them to inform the right Brussels’ companies about interesting requests or offers of collaboration and matchmaking events.

What are the projects for 2020? To further stimulate innovation by internationalisation, we have developed for 2020 our first fully integrated action plan aimed at boosting the international commercial and R&D activities of Brussels’ companies, as well as the attraction of foreign investors reinforcing Brussels’ ecosystems. This action plan consists of over 150 economic missions, trade fairs, roadshows and other events through which Brussels’ companies and foreign investors can count on our experts in business/financial/digital/social models, economic sectors, geographic areas and European programs. This should result in a more open and innovative Brussels’ economy.