Boosting innovative Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Regions for young entrepreneurs
“Europe is a land of innovation waiting for cultivation. SMEs are its seed, ESIFs its tools, and growth and jobs are its harvest. We are iEER – cultivating young entrepreneurs within and between the regions to be the crop of Europe’s future.”

Composed of EER (European Entrepreneurial Region) and non-EER regions, the project iEER addresses the challenges regional authorities face in optimizing structural funds to support young entrepreneurs in the regions due to 1) Lack of awareness or entrepreneurial competence both for local and regional authorities (LRAs) and the higher education institution (HEIs); 2) Fragmented actions of actors either operating in silos or duplication of efforts, 3) Uneven development and resources between outlying and centre areas of a region and 4) Limited funding provision or at risk of ineffective management of funds. 

iEER aims to define paths and solution for partner regions enabling HEIs and the other Quadruple Helix actors to be a part of thriving entrepreneurship ecosystem supporting young entrepreneurship through improving 11 ESIF programmes in 10 diverse regions from FI, DK, UK, IE, ES, IT, DE, FR, PL and RO. 

In the 2 years of interregional learning and 2 years of monitoring, iEER taps the pool of EER expertise and transfers the best practices through peer-learning, guided workshops and bottom-up approach empowering the LRAs, HEIs, business and young entrepreneurs to take ownership of the development and implementation of 10 action plans. iEER also constantly involves non-partner regions (in particular less-developed regions) to validate the transferability of the best practices for European upscale. 

Each endorsed action plan is envisaged to improve the addressed ESIFs through: project pipelines for best practise importing (entrepreneurial university and startup support), adaption of multi- level governance, multi-funding or/and a evaluation tool which ultimately lead to growth and more jobs.