The COSME-funded project ‘Fostering collaboration through mapping, analysing, and interlinking of European Entrepreneurial Regions’, concluded in January 2022, had the objective of strengthening the impact of existing regional actions aimed at supporting innovative SMEs, start-ups and scale-ups in the context of the European Entrepreneurial Regions initiative.
Results of the project
The output of the project included eight interregional Action Plans, that were developed to tackle the needs identified for further actions to improve the entrepreneurial ecosystems of the participating regions.
A portfolio of the EER cooperation shows an overview of key areas where regions need further interregional support and potentially serving EU, national and/ or regional policy makers to further investigate where and what kind of support is required.
EER cooperation portfolio
The project has demonstrated that
European regions are vitally interested to scale-up their entrepreneurial ecosystems through European cooperation and that there is a need join forces at regional level to build capacity for more effective policies, deliver more specialised services for SMEs and develop more intense cross-border connections among various ecosystem players, such as investors, accelerators, incubators, digital innovation hubs, soft landing agencies and regional development agencies.
The projects'
Policy Brief contains some lessons learnt and recommendations for further collaboration and outlines the EU instruments and tools that could be explored by the regions.
Background information
The project is a joint initiative of the Directorate-General for Entrepreneurship and SMEs (GROW) and the Executive Agency for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises, implemented by a consortium led by Technopolis Group, together with IDEA Consult, EBN, and the University of Athens.
The project initially counted ten European Entrepreneurial Regions Île-de-France (FR), Flanders (BE), North Brabant (NL), Catalonia (ES), Marche (IT), Lombardy (IT), Lower Austria (AT), Central Macedonia (GR), Western Greece (GR), and Northern and Western Region Ireland (IE).In a second phase started in 2020, eight new regions have joined the renewal phase of the project, namely Pomorskie (PL), Helsinki (FI), Valencia (ES), Gelderland (NL), Northern Ireland (UK), Malopolski (PL), Asturias (ES), and Navarra (ES).
Fostering collaboration across entrepreneurial ecosystems - Guide to mapping, action plan design and peer learning for regions’The project’s
final conference Connect and Rebound took place in Helsinki (Finland) on 30 November 2021.