RCIA
Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) represent highly innovative companies with potential for strong economic impact and growth as one of Europe’s most dynamic sectors. Their strength is in their growth-inducing abilities that are not limited to this sector, being drivers of innovation in other industries where their skills/services are increasingly used to create new products/services._x000D_
Through interregional policy learning, RCIA aims to improve the Structural Funds policy instruments related to the SME competitiveness by focusing on supporting creative SMEs to set impulses for higher growth, by positioning  CCI as “the missing link” throughout sectors and disciplines in regard to innovation and competitiveness, by increasing the attractiveness and innovative image of a city/region/country (attract talent, create & retain jobs in the territory) and by positioning CCI as a pillar of the competitiveness policy._x000D_
By exchanging 20+ good practices between regional policy-oriented stakeholders groups and implementing the learnings through 8 regional action plans we aim to increase the number of collaborations between creative SMEs and companies from the wider economy (by 5 % on average by 2022) leading to a higher competitiveness of both types of SMEs and eventually to new products and solutions developed through cross-sectorial collaboration. _x000D_
RCIA intends to (1) strengthen the creative SMEs competitiveness by improving their skills (development/execution of business plans, interaction with investors, mentoring programmes) and to support their growth on global markets; (2) adapt various funding mechanisms to the particularities of CCI (including the possibility of capacity building measures for banks); (3) increase the awareness of the companies from the wider economy on the transformative power (added-value) of creative SMEs for their own competitiveness; (4) develop/adapt/improve the eco-system from classic spatial cross-collaboration into a hollistic approach.