EU FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT TIPS

Topic: Capitalising the full potential of online collaboration for SME innovation

Specific challenge: Identifying suitable partners for innovation activities is recognised as a major barrier to SME innovation. Innovation support services are addressing this challenge traditionally by two interventions that are often combined: (a) the provision of networking space for personal meetings either as one-off meeting (‘brokerage events’) or as more stable networks (‘clusters’) often with a limited geographic reach; and (b) the definition of ‘cooperation profiles’ (‘technology offers’, ‘partner search profile’ etc.) that are distributed through networks of intermediaries. To a different degree intermediaries become active in establishing the partnership (‘brokerage’). Social media and other web-based services challenge these existing approaches and ask for their revision.

Scope: To address the described gaps proposals should address one or more of the following aspects:

• develop and test new service designs for ‘assistance to online collaboration for innovation’ for SMEs in diverse sectors;
• make such new services accessible for enterprises in sectors that are typically not yet benefitting from innovation support;

·         develop and test a qualification profile, curriculum and training courses for staff currently providing brokerage services in established networks or SME agencies.

Service designs and qualification profiles shall be formulated independently from a particular collaboration or social media platform. Tests of services shall be undertaken on platforms that are open and bring together already a critical mass of enterprises and innovation stakeholders. Establishing such platforms will not be supported.

The nature of the topic – online collaboration – suggests that the training modules are established as web-based self- or collaborative learning modules that are supported by case studies in the form of videos. The qualification profiles and training modules shall be published under a creative commons license.

Projects proposing new service designs for ‘assistance to online collaboration for innovation’ should indicate on which platform(s) the new service would be tested and in how far the newly developed service could be scaled-up.

Deadline Date 10-03-2015 17:00:00