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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - IEM17 (Innovative Enterprise Malta 2017)

Teaser

Summary

Innovation and skills are important ingredients for ensuring sustainable growth and plan an important part in driving Europeâ€™s long-term competitiveness. It is for this reason that the EU is increasing its efforts to help innovators turn good ideas into business realities.
Malta has acknowledged that innovation is key for growth.
Two of the main priorities for Special Interest Travel Ltd with the collaboration of the Ministry for the Economy, Investment and Small Business were ensuring a sharper focus in EU legislation in addressing the challenges faced by SMEs and the extension in time and financial capacity of the Europe Fund for Strategic Investment to help mobilise private investment while making smart use of scarce budgetary resources. In fact, our project was aimed to tackle these issues and as the title of the conference suggests; â€˜Innovative Enterpriseâ€™ we planned to incentivise the key importance of innovation and skills to facilitate the investment opportunities for innovative SMEs.
We tackled in the 3-day conference the following points:
- Provided more information on the Investment Plan, in particular how this plan intended to remove obstacles to investment and how to make smarter use of new and existing financial resources
- Explored InnovFin â€“ EU Finance for Innovators. High-level speakers provided delegates with added knowledge on the series of integrated and complimentary financing tools and advisory services available under InnovFin that cover the entire value chain on research and innovation in order to support investment for all enterprises. Specifically, the delegates were equipped with added tools and knowledge to help them harness the full potential offered by InnovFin through Horizon2020 as they explored amongst others; the interplay between InnovFin and COSME and InnovFin and the SME Guarantee, InnovFin Business Angles, InnovFin Technology Transfer and InnovFin Advisory.
Our project was aimed also to enhance the steps undertaken by the Horizon2020 work programme to support in the projectsâ€™ dissemination and exploitation activities. The delegates were given the chance of getting more in-depth and reliable knowledge on what is offered through Horizon2020. It was also an opportunity for the Commission to keep Member States informed of the progress towards meeting the objectives set out in Horizon2020.

Work performed

Work performed was split into 5 work package, a summary of which is below:
Work Package 1- Stakeholders Management: Creation of a complete contact list from the list of organisations provided by the Ministry for the Economy, Investment and Small Business.This updated contact list was merged with the list sent by the European Commission.
Work Package 2 - Outreach Acts: marketing the conference to the stakeholders sourced in WP1.A full marketing strategy implemented for this conference to target the maximum number of delegates.Official Maltese Presidency templates were used for all disseminated information.Marketing plan: -the setup of a dedicated online website about the conference which was used for the registration of delegate, - news media campaign with adverts published in local newspapers prior to the conference;- commercials aired on local radio station prior to the conference; -local and foreign journalists who were contacted and invited to attend and cover the conference; - social media campaign including the setup of a Facebook page, a LinkedIn & Twitter profile which were updated prior to, during and after the conference with a series of posts; - e-mail campaign including the setup of a dedicated e-mail account which was used to send a number of e-mails to the targeted stakeholders sourced in WP1;- printing and distribution of leaflets prior to the conference; -purchase and distribution of promotion materials for all conference attendees.
Work Package 3- Pre-Conference Management and Coordination: Management and Coordination of the Event before the Event. Prior to the start of the conference: sourcing all services required to organise the conference; receipt and processing of all registrations ; the collection of the details of the delegates required to process their individual bookings once approved; the processing of accommodation bookings for all approved delegates and assisting the delegate with any queries relating to their flight booking; all the bookings required to fulfil the requirements of the conference agenda including the setup of the conference hall with all equipment, the menu content for each coffee break, lunch and dinner, any transport and networking activities; and finally the compilation of all of this information into a working checklist which was distributed to all the staff and management team to be used in WP4
Work package 4 -Conference Implementation and Logistics: All the services required to implement the conference and the logistics involved during the actual event dates, which included the management of all services booked, such as the staff at the airport overseeing the arrivals and their transport, the staff at the hotel welcome desk overseeing the delegates check-in and assisting them with any queries, the staff at the networking activity overseeing the transport, food quality and service, the staff at the conference overseeing the speaker rehearsals, the speaker presentations during the conference, the food quality and service during the coffee breaks and lunches and the a/v equipment throughout, the staff at the networking activity overseeing the transport, food quality, service and entertainment, the staff at the venue overseeing the networking activities, and finally the staff at the hotel overseeing the departures and their transport
Work package 5 - Dissemination: Collection of data prior to and during the conference included the photos taken by the photographer during the conference, the presentations given by the speakers during the conference, the video taken of the conference during the day, all of the delegate contact lists with details such as who was not interested, who was rejected and who was approved but did not attend and a report of the results of the various marketing activities conducted in WP2

Final results

Impact: Our conference contributed to the objectives and impacts set-out in the Access to Risk Finance work programme in that this 3-day conference raised awareness of the potential of financial instruments, facilities and accompanying measures launched, in particular, under Horizon 2020 to enhance access to finance for research and innovation. As specified also in the same work programme, the conference was a focus on the interactions possible between these instruments under Horizon 2020 and COSME, European Structural and Investment Funds and the European Fund for Strategic Investment. In addition, this conference brought together policy-makers, financial intermediaries and representatives of the research innovation and business communities including SMEs.
Thus, through this conference we aimed to impact interested stakeholders; policy-makers, financial intermediaries and representatives of the research innovation and business communities including SMEs to gain more knowledge on the latest available financial tools so as to facilitate research and innovation. We also wanted to create more synergies between delegates to facilitate cooperation and ultimately boost growth and jobs in Europe for the benefit of the wider community.