Euresearch’s approach to “Empower regional clusters and networks” to better support SME for European innovation opportunities, won the best practice category “Cooperation with local authorities and increase the Network’s impact”.
Euresearch is proud to have won two Best Practice Awards out of a total of four categories at the annual conference of Enterprise Europe Network 2013. Both of the awards are related to a better linking of regional, national and international innovation support to SME by cooperating with clusters and regional innovation networks. The cooperation engaged within by Euresearch contributed to position Switzerland as one of the best performing countries for innovation support within the entire EEN network. This international recognition by the peers of Enterprise Europe Network encourages Euresearch to deepen yet further the cooperation with Swiss clusters and regional innovation networks.
Euresearch’s approach to “Empower regional clusters and networks” to better support SME for European innovation opportunities, has won the best practice category “Cooperation with local authorities and increase the Network’s impact”. The vote was undertaken by the network peers, the different organisations hosting a node of Enterprise Europe Network all over Europe and beyond. By training the clusters and regional networks and offering them services tailored to their needs, Euresearch empowered these regional actors to offer, at local level, innovation support to SME in a global context. This generated a win-win-win cooperation for triple added value for the benefit of SME, the regional actors as well as a better impact and return on investment of European innovation at national level. The various cooperation initiated and developed by Euresearch in this context also contributed to position the Swiss EEN consortium as one of the best performing within the EEN network. More information: link to best practice description.
Under the category “Sector Groups Best Practice”, the methodology “Clusters Clustered” of the sector group Micro and Nanotechnologies of the Enterprise Europe Network was elected by the network peers as best practice. This sector group brought together 11 clusters from different countries in the frame of a brokerage event and organised an international inter-cluster workshop. This was the starting point of a new initiative called “Microtechnics Alliance”, in which four clusters decided to formalise their future cooperation. This is a significant step towards the development and structuring of inter-cluster collaboration in the short-term and the creation of meta-clusters over the long term. As the Swiss member of this sector group Euresearch has contributed to include Swiss actors and clusters in those activities. More information: link to best practice description.