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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EEN EF4INNO (Enterprise Europe Network innovation management specific services in the two new regions of Eastern France)

Teaser

Summary

EEN EF4 INNO projects provided the Networkâ€™s Innovation management services in the regions served by the EEN EASTERN FRANCE consortium. The action was divided between
- Key account management (KAM) mentoring support to those SMEs beneficiaries of the H2020 SME Instrument scheme and possible EIC pilot related schemes
- Enhanced Innovation Management Capacity services provided to SMEs with a potential to access new international markets through innovation
Both schemes have scaled up in the regional ecosystems during the 2015 â€“ 2016 period, with an efficient mentoring of partners with lesser experience in order to start the new period (2017-2018) with a high quality and readiness level of services throughout the consortium regions.
Despite the improvement, some issues remained from the start requiring a lot of efforts from the partners, under the COSME core services activities, to make the service more widely known from potential beneficiaries. These are:
- Lack of SMEs submitting relevant proposal to the SME instrument.
Mostly because the understanding of the business oriented scheme of the instrument took several years to be fully integrated by SMEs and their ecosystems, with a lot of lessons learnt during the first two years. The efforts start paying off since the number of cases has more than doubled from the previous contract to this one, despite lower number of phase 2 towards the end. One has to take into account also that several new national or regional instruments have been launched and become available perhaps on a less competitive manner for this target of disruptive SMEs as well.
- Difficulties in engaging EIMC clients in the long journey
Project partners have also had to face the competition with many other supporting schemes although not dedicated to innovation management, but generally acceleration driven â€“ even like the â€œScale-Upâ€ pilot activity sometimes, which made the appealing of the EIMC sometimes difficult for SMEs. So a lot of promotion and prescription from other actors of the ecosystem was still required during this period. On a positive note, almost all EIMC services beneficiaries are very satisfied and most of them have received an impact in terms of growth which shows that EIMC service is really a benchmark of what EEN services should become tomorrow (the â€œclient journeyâ€ and â€œhub and spokeâ€ notions) but it also proves that targeted marketing and communication is even more required.

Work performed

During the contractual period, 12 SMEs in the consortium geographical area were awarded with an SME instrument grant (SME instrument phase 1 mostly), which is more than twice than during the previous contract. We estimate that about 15 have obtained a Seal of Excellence.
This volume is in conformity with the ratio of French project granted under the SME Instrument initiative and the ratio of innovation effort in the respective regions. KAM services were thus provided by two partners (one in each region of the consortium) with mostly new phase 1 cases, but also one phase 2 case and two others already imitated at the end of the previous contract. Business Acceleration Services were also provided directly by the partners under the COSME activity, but no SMEs did participate on any of the EASME supported BAS mentoring, pitching or networking session.
Most services were therefore concentrated on the EIMC scheme, provided by 3 partners. Those services proved to be very successful in terms of image, longer term relationships between the EEN and clients as well as positioning of the EEN in the innovation regional ecosystem. The activity was provided with the same level of service anywhere in the consortium territory thanks to efficient reorganisation after the first two year period.

Final results

On the KAM service, all clients approached benefited from coaching which was always welcome as very useful. Both KAM advisors were involved in following part or all of the coaching sessions and were able to provide additional support under COSME activity as part of the so-called Business Acceleration Service.
It is important to mention that all three phase 2 cases were awarded 5 million â‚¬ each, the maximum for an SME instrument application, due to their involvement in healthcare related sector which provided them with a significant boost for growth.
On other cases (phase1), the impact of the coaching should be underlined. The companies have benefit from coaching to work on crucial issues as the supply chain management or the knowledge of the targeted market.
On the EIMC services, 47 new SMEs were mentored and about 20 more achieved having started in the previous period. Most EIMC clients also had concrete benefits out of the supporting scheme: increase of turnover, improved profitability, better strategic planning, secure investment and funding, more efficient human resources management and involvement â€¦
One should also mention that the innovation concerned not only technological but many other forms of innovation were covered: innovation in services, in the way the company is organised, in process as well as in marketing. If new products and new services were launched in the market as a result other achievements within those participating SMEs were measured which contributed to create impact.
Many sectors were concerned, with some highly technological like healthcare, micro technology, ICT, but other very traditional like metal work, automotive industry, stone exploitation, textile, wood, Plastics and composites industry.
EIMC services also act as a showcase of the â€œclient journeyâ€ approach which will be set up in the future of Enterprise Europe Network services. Even if the selling of this approach requires some time, all of the SMEs who benefitted from the service were first of all at least satisfied and even very satisfied in many cases and secondly showed some real impact in terms of growth with 4 ASOs resulting from this.
Yet the positioning of the EIMC is not very clear in the future EIC but we really believe that it should be an element of its own within the future Horizon Europe.