The MED Programme is an EU funded transnational cooperation programme, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund. Interreg MED supports the sharing of experiences, knowledge, and the improvement of public policies between national, regional and local authorities and other territorial actors of eligible regions of the MED area.
 

Supporting SMEs in their innovation process

SMEs are the economic and growth engine of Europe and the Mediterranean. Their innovation potential therefore plays a critical role for their competitiveness and a sustainable development of the region. Mediterranean SMEs do however face challenges in growing their businesses due to a lack of innovation capacity. Innovation is the result of the ability to generate creative ideas and put them into practice, creativity therefore is the key to enable it.

CreaInnovation project aims to support SMEs in their innovation process by providing them with a methodology - a structured innovation process - and tools to convert creativity into innovation, generating sustainable business ideas and models.

In the favourable setting of Creativity Labs, SMEs, students, universities, public authorities and further stakeholders are equipped with skills and given stimuli to overcome innovation impediments by exhausting their creativity potential. Adopting a ‘creative entrepreneurship’ approach to innovation, the project draws on young peoples’ fresh minds combined with managerial expertise and technical knowledge of experts and academics brought together in Creativity sessions - a workshop model that builds the basis for a Mediterranean Innovation Community. The project further elaborates a sustainability assessment model to evaluate the developed and tested innovation process on an economic, social and environmental scale.

Finally, it takes the experience to a policy level with the objective to push along a regional eco-system that systematically reinforces SME innovation.

The project is funded under the Interreg MED Programme and its implementation period goes from 1st February 2018 until 31st July 2020.

Contact person: Berta Pérez
europeanprojects@cambrabcn.org

Documentation about this project