Horizon 2020 Proposal submitted for EU funding
Capability Innovation Scan for SMEs - CISSME
Horizon 2020 Call for proposals "INNOSUP-07-2017 Innovating SMEs"
"Europe has been good at turning Euros into knowledge,
but not that good at turning the new knowledge into Euros and jobs."
Objectives
CISSME’s prime objective is to propose a revision to the current set of incentives offered by the European Union (EU) and its member states to encourage innovation among SMEs – bringing about a new balance by increasing the focus on soft factors (e.g., skills, capabilities) and reducing the emphasis on some hard factors (e.g., R&D, tax voucher).
CISSME will use a methodology that has been developed by Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, to identify strong and weak innovation capabilities in SMEs; the Innovation Capability Scan - ICS. Using the ICS the consortium will develop a segmentation tool that can be used by funding agencies to focus new support measures aimed at raising the capability of SMEs to innovate
Challenges
The project comprises several component studies.
- What are current incentives for SMEs to innovate and how are these being applied?
- Which methods are currently used to segment SMEs and do these show a bias towards different sectors?
- Implementation of the existing online questionnaire to target a higher number of SMEs and produce data set that can be analysed using proprietary software.
- Produce a set of recommendations for the EU and national agencies to have a better understanding of the innovation capabilities and the related supporting measures which need to be implemented to support European SMEs.
- Develop an online assessment tool for SMEs which matches the result of the ICS with a report on the existing support measure available at European and local level.
Benefit for SMEs
For a participating SMEs there will be an immediate practical output, an analysis of their innovation capability. Then the questionnaire has been designed to highlight in which of the five senses the SME excels and in which capacity/capability needs to be developed. On the base of the result, each SMEs will receive a tailored report which identify the best available supporting measures at regional/national level.
Stakeholder Engagement
The CISSME consortium established a wide range of partnership with different stakeholder, in particular:
- Chambers of Commerce
- Industry Associations, especially of SMEs and start-ups
- Local, regional and international innovation agencies and SMEs accelerators.
All these organizations will support the project in many ways:
- Participating in the Advisory Board
- Supporting the communication and dissemination of the tools thought their channels/network
- Being included in the database offered to SME to gather information about available supporting measures
CISSME Contact
Project Lead – Rotterdam University of Applied Science – Ron Ainsbury - r.e.ainsbury@hr.nl
Project coordinator – ABIS – Marco Matrisciano – marco.matrisciano@abis.org
