Peer learning of innovation agencies for advanced support to scale-ups
Following international evidence that shows that a small number of high-growth firms are vital for job growth and overall economic growth, and the European Commission's Start-up and Scale-up Initiative, Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) launched in 2017 a new flagship service to support scale-ups. However, innovation agency services are in too many occasions standardised and do not take into account the rapid evolving entrepreneurial ecosystem and the advanced needs of scale-ups. Innovation agencies across Europe need to be ready today to deliver advanced assessment services to scale-ups and be able to offer support tailored to their needs.
The objective of Scale-ups Ready is to enable the participating innovation agencies to exchange knowledge, know-how, and good practices on advanced methodologies and tools for scale-ups assessment (including SMEs with high-growth potential) and customised support services, in order to develop better approaches for client intake and support of scale-ups.
Based on the Twinning+ methodology, the project aims to cover peer-learning and peer-review activities for three kinds of services through specific assessment instruments that when combined offer in-depth analysis of the needs of scale-ups, in order to provide them with tailored support:
1) An advanced IP valuation scheme, IPscore® 2.2 (FORTH),
2) An advanced business innovation roadmap tool, smE-MPOWER ‘Business innovation roadmap tool’ (LIC),
3) An advanced Innovation Health Check assessment tool (FUNDECYT-PCTEX).
This peer-learning and peer-review scheme has been developed based on each partner's identified competences and gaps in advanced services for scale-ups. The result will bring in new added-value service offerings to participating organisations, will lead to better approaches and the adaptation of tools to the specific national/regional contexts. The Design Options Paper will be shared with other EU innovation agencies and networks, and with national and EU policy-makers.