European Commission

Day 2 of the SME Assembly opened with inspiring and thought provoking speeches from keynote speakers Professor Daniel Isenberg, Alberto Onetti and Petri Peltonen.

Professor Daniel Isenberg spoke of the need to change our beliefs surrounding entrepreneurship and the fundamental need to focus on scaling up and ban unicorns from public discourse so as to ensure that this phenomenon does not skew relevant policy. Chairman and Founder of Mind the Bridge Alberto Onetti, followed on with his talk on how to get SMEs to innovate and the need to expose them to innovation and cross-border partnerships. Petri Peltonen closed the opening speeches with his call for SME policy to be more horizontal and cross-sectoral in order for SMEs to be recognised more strongly across different sectors.

The day continued with a participatory session on Sustainable SME Growth where delegates shared their thoughts and ideas on how to build and move towards a sustainable economy that works for people.

It was then time for the parallel sessions which included workshops, masterclasses and policy sessions spanning the upcoming SME Green Deal, the value chain in the Finnish maritime ecosystem, sustainable finance, jobs of the future, the opportunities for SMEs in the field of space data and more.

The day closed with the highly anticipated finals of the European Enterprise Promotion Awards. The Awards were opened by Markku Markkula, President of the European Committee of the Regions, who announced the opening of the next call for the European Entrepreneurial Region awards. The ceremony that followed celebrated the achievements and wins of projects across six different categories as well as an overall Grand Jury Prize winner.

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Find out all about the EEPA class of 2019 right here on the News Portal.

Congratulations to all the winners, and be sure to check out the updates and activities from Day 2 using #SMEAssembly2019 and by following @EEPA_EU on Twitter.

Watch the SME Assembly 2019 highlights:

The European Enterprise Promotion Awards 2019 celebrated the best of the best in a ceremony on the 2^nd day of the SME Assembly 2019. On 26 November 2019, six category winners were awarded with EEPA prizes, and an overall Grand Jury Prize winner was crowned as being the most outstanding project across the six categories for 2019.

Congratulations once again to the EEPA class of 2019!

Promoting the Entrepreneurial Spirit

Haven Incubator CVBA-SO, a safe port for young experimentation, Belgium

Investing in Entrepreneurial Skills

IDEA Innovation & Entrepreneurship Centre, Cyprus

Improving the Business Environment

Fomento de la Contratacion Publica con Pymes, Spain

Supporting the Internationalisation of Business

HealthTech Nordic, Sweden

Supporting the Development of Green Markets and Resource Efficiency

TILOS, Greece

Responsible and Inclusive Entrepreneurship

Start-Up Your Future, Germany

Grand Jury Prize

Green PAC iLab, The Netherlands

We are getting closer to the event of the year…the SME Assembly! The prestigious SME Assembly 2019 is just around the corner and will be hosted by the Finnish presidency of the European Commission in Helsinki from 25 – 27 November 2019. Delegates from across the world will come together to hack policy, discuss enterprise and create the governance structure of the Small Business Act.

This year’s Assembly will feature renowned economist Mariana Mazzucato as this year’s Schumpeter Lecturer as well as a host of sessions on the most cutting edge topics for SMEs and the European enterprise ecosystem, on topics such as Sustainable Finance, the Future of jobs, Women in Finance, the Single Market and more.

One of the highlights of the Assembly will be the European finals for the European Enterprise Promotion Awards. 18 shortlisted projects will be competing for the six category prizes and the overall Grand Jury Prize, awarded to the project the jury feels has excelled in their contributions to the European enterprise ecosystem.

The Assembly will be both a physical and digital event with extensive coverage online brought to you by the Promoting Enterprise team. Make sure that you don’t miss out on any of the latest updates and check that you are following us on Twitter, Facebookand Instagram to see what happens in Helsinki.

Don’t forget to keep visiting the News Portal for key updates such as the introduction of this year’s Schumpeter lecturer, sneak peeks at what this year’s Assembly has to offer and more! We hope you enjoy the newsletter and do not forget to submit your news, articles and updates to be featured in an upcoming issue.

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Time to introduce the last of our shortlisted projects for EEPA 2019! These three projects were chosen by the EEPA 2019 Jury to compete in the EEPA 2019 finals at the SME Assembly in Helsinki this November.

Today we meet the projects nominated at European level in our final category, Category 6: Responsible and Inclusive Entrepreneurship.

Start-Up Your Future, Germany

“Start-Up Your Future” is a pilot project of the Wirtschaftsjunioren Deutschland (WJD), funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. It aims to help refugees in Berlin-Brandenburg to set up their own businesses by giving them support and offering them the option of self-employment through mentoring partnerships with Gründerpaten. The partnerships invite voluntary mentors to guide refugee entrepreneurs through the startup process, from brainstorming ideas to writing a business plan. Since the project began, 185 start-up sponsorships have been implemented, 207 refugees have been helped in their business ventures and 22 startups have received support.

Insieme per il lavoro, Together for Work, Italy

Together for Work facilitates the inclusion of low-level autonomy individuals, including those in vulnerable situations living in the metropolitan area of Bologna and specifically, unemployed young people and adults in difficult financial and social situations, into the labour market. The project’s work is in line with the sustainable development goals aimed at ending poverty and providing employment for all. This is done through horizontal cooperation, via awareness actions and active involvement of local companies, professional training bodies, associations, unions and the non-profit sector. In the first two years 135 companies were involved and 260 individual placements in companies were achieved.

Reborn Programme – Programa Renace, Spain

The REBORN initiative reduces and where possible eliminates debts of businessmen and entrepreneurs whose businesses closed as a consequence of the financial crisis. Run by the Institute of Development, the initiative consists of a programme of exoneration of the liabilities accumulated through extrajudicial agreements agreed by the Public Authorities. The programme is an incentive to re-start entrepreneurial activities without entrepreneurs having to enter employment or committing fraud when restarting their business. So far, 69 companies and self-employed people in critical situations have managed to save their businesses, and a total of 7.3 million euros has been exonerated to allow entrepreneurs to start again and create employment for others.

Have a look at all of the 2019 shortlisted projects right here on the Portal!

• Promoting the Entrepreneurial Spirit
• Investing in Entrepreneurial Skills
• Improving the Business Environment
• Supporting the Internationalisation of Business
• Supporting the Development of Green Markets and Resource Efficiency

Don’t forget to have a look at all of the EEPA 2019 national winners that represent the top projects across all of the participating countries right here.

We are nearing the end of our shortlist introductions as today is the turn of the projects nominated at European level in Category 5: Supporting the Development of Green Markets and Resource Efficiency.

These three projects have been nominated for their work in green markets and for taking an environmental approach with their projects. Time to meet the next three projects that the EEPA 2019 Jury have chosen to compete in the EEPA 2019 finals at the SME Assembly in Helsinki this November.

TILOS, Greece

The TILOS initiative created an integrated energy solution with innovative features to help island regions transition to new models of production and management of electricity energy. The solution uses clean, renewable energy sources and the application of modern energy storage technologies to reduce dependency on cost-intensive and polluting oil. The solution was successfully implemented on Tilos and a toolbox of innovative products was created to facilitate international and community adoption of smart energy practices. Tilos has been able to penetrate up to 75% of the renewable energy sources and exports additional clean energy to the island of Kos.

Green PAC iLab, Netherlands

At GreenPAC iLab, new entrepreneurs in the plastics industry are supported to help them start their businesses and achieve sustainable and circular business models. The project functions as a community where entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for a plastic product or service are coached and given access to a network of professionals that help with feasibility studies, research and product development. Through collaboration with plastics professionals and research groups, the GreenPAC iLab is fostering a new generation of plastics entrepreneurs guided by circular and sustainable values. To date, 40 start-ups have received assistance and 52 jobs have been created.

KTP (Knowledge Transfer Partnership), Sweden

KTP Energy, run by Dalarna University and The University of Gävle, facilitates a sustainable knowledge flow between academia and the business world to conduct strategic development projects within regional SMEs with great energy efficiency potential. The projects are implemented by European graduates together with academic and business coaches. These partnerships have led to 75% of companies creating new development positions, and many graduates remaining within the companies, meaning that young graduates are moving to rural areas with their knowledge and skills and contributing to their development. To date, 24 successful sub-projects have led to increased energy efficiency and profitability for participating companies and their customers.

Keep coming back to the News Portal every week to meet the 2019 shortlisted projects!

Have a look at all of the 2019 shortlisted projects right here on the Portal!

• Promoting the Entrepreneurial Spirit
• Investing in Entrepreneurial Skills
• Improving the Business Environment
• Supporting the Internationalisation of Business
• Responsible and Inclusive Entrepreneurship

Don’t forget to have a look at all of the EEPA 2019 national winners that represent the top projects across all of the participating countries right here.

What does it mean to be an EEPA winner? What goes into a successful project? Last year’s Grand Jury Prize Winner, Lean Landing from Denmark has released a blueprint of their path to success and they want to share it with you!

In their blueprint they detail all the different steps they went through, lessons learnt, key aspects of their project and more. Have a read through their blueprint here and don’t hesitate to get in touch with them or the Promoting Enterprise team for more information.

Who are Lean Landing?

The Lean Landing network consists of a total of 19 partners, accelerators and incubators. The network has members from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Holland and the United Kingdom. Members of the Lean Landing network open up their facilities to the 190 participating SMEs, giving them bases in their target countries, as well as a local business support system. These local bases allow SMEs to gather first impressions of the foreign market, establish contacts, and learn important local business etiquette and practices. So far, of the 190 SMEs involved, 80 have successfully been abroad with the Lean Landing project.

The project is run by Væksthus Sjælland, a non-profit organisation established in 2007 that provides services for entrepreneurs and micro SMEs with scalability and growth potential. The organisation is also responsible for providing business support to the Zealand Region of Denmark and is one of five national units.

Read their EEPA 2018 winner testimonial here.  

Time to meet the fourth category of projects that have been nominated for this year’s shortlist! Let’s meet the three projects that the EEPA 2019 Jury have chosen to compete in Category 4: Supporting the Internationalisation of Business at the EEPA 2019 finals at the SME Assembly in Helsinki this November.

Crossroads 2, Belgium

CrossRoads2 is a project within the European Interreg Flanders-Netherlands programme aiming to stimulate sustainable cross-border cooperation between SMEs in Flanders and the Southern Netherlands (Zeeland, Noord-Brabant and Limburg). The project focuses on companies with good, innovative and technically feasible project ideas, and helps expand their regional development plans to incorporate cross-border opportunities. Concrete actions include building an efficient network to establish contacts and disseminate information, and the creation of financial incentives within a sound legal framework. Since 2016, over 750 companies have been involved in cross-border exchanges resulting in financial support for 56 innovation projects and 35 feasibility studies.

The Romanian high tech innovation, competitive all over the world, Romania

This project aims to push Romanian high-tech industries at an international level, to export Romanian high-tech capacities, and regain Romanian competitiveness in the global arena. The initiative makes use of partnerships at both national and international level between support organisations, universities and national institutions. The project works to build trust between all involved partners, and where possible encourage synchronisation of processes to avoid system blockages. In addition, important work has been carried out on re-building innovation models and analysing what Romanian companies need to advance. To date the initiative has supported over 2 500 individual participants and over 800 companies.

HealthTech Nordic, Sweden

HealthTech Nordic is a community of over 230 Nordic startups offering digital healthcare solutions designed to empower patients and revolutionise healthcare services. The project provides knowledge and initiatives to accelerate startup development, in order to tackle healthcare shortages and unite pioneers in HealthTech and eHealth. The community creates connections between innovative solutions, healthcare and the global market by advancing ideas and pooling resources, and provided support is based on members’ immediate challenges and on state-of-the-art research in international scaling of startups. Through their work, HealthTech Nordic helps drive regional development and facilitates new job creation in HealthTech startups.

Keep coming back to the News Portal every week to meet the 2019 shortlisted projects!

Don’t forget to have a look at all of the EEPA 2019 national winners that represent the top projects across all of the participating countries right here.

Who else has made it onto the 2019 European shortlist? You have met the first six projects chosen by this year’s jury, time to meet the next three projects that the EEPA 2019 Jury have chosen to compete in the EEPA 2019 finals at the SME Assembly in Helsinki this November.

This week, we are meeting the three shortlisted projects competing for the prize in Category 3: Improving the Business Environment.

Fast Tracking Success, Bulgaria

The Fast Tracking Success Initiative focuses on accelerating the professional development of young university and vocational school graduates, by providing employment opportunities and internships in Bulgarian and foreign companies operating in industrial zones. The initiative also assists investors in state-owned industrial zones to overcome the lack of qualified specialists, and contributes to promoting investments in new sectors of the economy, as well as those with high added value, by creating favourable conditions for the investors. So far, over 100 highly qualified young professionals have taken up permanent jobs in companies with production facilities.

The Innovation Market, Czech Republic

The Innovation Market is run by the city of Prague, and aims to enhance the transfer of knowledge from the scientific and research domains to the private sphere. The Market is a publicly available web application that offers research services to entrepreneurs looking for research or development partners. By facilitating cooperation between research institutes, universities, entrepreneurs and businesses, the project aims to streamline the city’s commercialisation of research and development, and increase innovative activities and competitiveness of Prague businesses. Institutes register on a voluntary basis, meaning entrepreneurs and businesses have direct contact with those institutes open to collaboration.

Promotion of public procurement with SMEs, Spain

Since 2015, the City of Valladolid has adopted specific measures to promote and facilitate the participation of SMEs in public sector contracts. The city adapted contracts to the capacity of SMEs, allowing them to acquire valuable experience and credibility that could be re-used when competing in other tenders from other awarding authorities. According to municipal data, the awarding of contracts to SMEs is twice the national and European average, reaching 75% of contracts awarded in 2016 and 2017, and even 81% in 2018, with 51% of the total amount of the municipal expense managed through contracts awarded to SMEs.

Keep coming back to the News Portal every week to meet the 2019 shortlisted projects!

Don’t forget to have a look at all of the EEPA 2019 national winners that represent the top projects across all of the participating countries right here.

Ready to meet more of this year’s shortlisted projects? Over the next few weeks each of the projects that the EEPA 2019 Jury have chosen will be presented in the category in which they will be competing in the EEPA 2019 finals at the SME Assembly in Helsinki this November.

This week we continue introductions with the three shortlisted projects competing for the prize in Category 2: Investing in Entrepreneurial Skills.

IDEA Innovation Centre & Incubator – Accelerator for Start-up, Cyprus

IDEA is an innovation centre and incubator and acts as an accelerator for startups. In order to invest in entrepreneurial skills, IDEA undertakes a cluster of activities that focus on providing an entire spectrum of business support, positively altering perceptions of entrepreneurship, facilitating cross-sector cooperation, promoting Cyprus as an innovation hub, developing investment networks, promoting volunteering, and ensuring entrepreneurship is open to all regardless of gender, age or ability. Social inclusion is put into practice through inclusive entrepreneurship, specifically opening doors to entrepreneurs with special needs. To date, IDEA has developed 48 New Businesses and created over 70 new jobs.

FactorYmpresa Turismo, Italy

FactorYmpresa Tourism is the Invitalia business acceleration programme for aspiring tourism entrepreneurs. The programme supports the best company ideas in order to encourage tourism innovation in Italy, placing an innovative mix of mentoring services, financial contributions and local and national networking opportunities at the disposal of aspiring entrepreneurs. The programme organises Accelerathons, a fully immersive 36 hours for start-uppers to work on their business ideas together with specialist tutors and mentors. Since 2017, the programme has generated 829 innovative business ideas originating from across Italy, and awarded €715,000.00 worth of financial aid.

Programa INOV CONTACTO – Programa de Estágios Internacionais de Jovens Quadros, Portugal

INOV Contacto is an innovative International Professional Apprenticeships program for young people with training and entities who wish to reinforce their teams with Portuguese talent. The aim is to support the overseas qualification of young professionals or corporate work forces in key areas of know-how, providing them with effective skills in the field of innovation, so as to stimulate and reinforce corporate competitiveness as well as the international image of Portugal. To date 5,624 young people have been involved, 1,235 entities (60% Portuguese) have participated across 82 different countries, resulting in over 1,500 job offers to participants.

Keep coming back to the News Portal every week to meet the 2019 shortlisted projects!

Don’t forget to have a look at all of the EEPA 2019 national winners that represent the top projects across all of the participating countries right here.

As we get closer to the EEPA 2019 ceremony and introduce our 2019 shortlisted projects, we looked back at previous EEPA 2018 winners and how being awarded this high European distinction has impacted their projects and work.

Read through what these previous winners had to say and don’t forget to stay up to date with the latest EEPA 2019 news right here on the News Portal.

“This win has motivated us to keep working even harder! Now we can say that we have been recognised in Europe, meaning that our next target must be higher. It has also made us humble. We can celebrate our win, but we need to keep developing our processes to maintain our status as a frontrunner in our field.”

• Kasvu Open – company growth sparring programme – ‘Supporting the internationalisation of business’ Winner 2018

“Winning the award generated a lot of positive attention both in the university and at ecosystem level. It helped us raise awareness about the entrepreneurial offers available to TU Wien scientists. This recognition brought additional visibility and helped to present TU Wien as an Entrepreneurial University. Since then, different European delegations have approached us to make presentations based on our work and experience.”

• i²c STARTacademy – “Investing in Entrepreneurial Skills” Winner 2018

“Receiving the award has given us great visibility. The regional press picked up our story and has positioned the Open Innovation 4.0 programme in the media, which has contributed to disseminating and raising awareness of the programme in the Asturian business ecosystem.

In addition to increased regional awareness, the award has also contributed to our position on the international stage. This is largely down to the respect that the institution that awarded us, the European Commission, receives. As a result, the organisations that drive the Open Innovation programme, IDEPA and CEEI Asturias, are now positioned at the European and even international level as points of reference among the key players in regional economic promotion.”

• Industry 4.0 – “Improving the Business Environment” Winner 2018

“The European award was very important for both national and international visibility to the project. This recognition is a relevant tool to promote the attractiveness of the city of Matosinhos for talents, tourists and investments. Moreover, the “Carbon-zero Living Lab Matosinhos” focused on the development and testing of low-carbon solutions in a specific area of the city, with the final objective being the replication of these solutions in other parts of the territory, and even exporting them to other cities and regions in Portugal and abroad. The award represents an opportunity to disseminate the project and increase this replication potential.”

• Matosinhos Carbon-zero Living Lab – ‘Supporting the development of green markets and resource efficiency’ Winner 2018

“Winning the award hasn’t really had that much of an impact on my daily work, but there has been a lot of positive attention from many people from other organisations both nationally and internationally. Furthermore our 19 partners in the project have also been very happy about the result and it has sparked a new sort of energy internally, that we have actually done something really special with our project.

The exposure from EEPA and Euronews, who worked with the EU commission since we won, has also been great. The video from when we received the ‘Grand Jury Prize’ was available the day after and the film that was shot by Euronews for ‘Euronews Business Planet’ is going to be part of our ongoing marketing material for the project.”

• Lean Landing – ‘Grand Jury Prize’ Winner 2018

“The most obvious part for us was the satisfaction of knowing that we are on the right path regarding our local development policy for the creation of new competitive and sustainable jobs in local level. The EEPA jury is well-known and reputable as an awarding body and thus winning an EEPA gave special credit to our efforts and recognition for the work our team have been doing. In addition, winning the award is an opportunity to take the time to look at what we have achieved, and where we want to take our blue growth policy in the future. It is a chance to take a step back and see how much we have accomplished and how we will motivate our municipality team to carry on working towards the future.”

• Piraeus Blue Entrepreneurship – ‘Promoting the entrepreneurial spirit’ Winner 2018

Have you seen the EEPA 2019 shortlist yet? Don’t forget to look here and keep coming back to find out more about this year’s shortlisted projects!