The objectives of Innovation County Action Plan intended to:

• Increase county’s economic competitiviness through stimulation of innovative activities

• increase of county’s economic atractiveness

• promote innovation-friendly climate and of domestic entrepreneurship

• stimulate the cooperation between business, academic and research institutes environment  in order to exploit the research results

• existence of a consistent innovation-related county plan, financially and politically supported by Maramures County Council and local communities

The document is available below:

Maramures Innovation County Action Plan

After Flevoland imported the project successfully in 2010, it is now up to the Manchester area in North- West England to make it happen.

Because of the demand for the project the province of Flevoland is running Summer Entrepreneur for the second time this year.

Last year there were 35 participants, 16 of them are still in business.

This year Flevoland will kick-off with 60 participants with various plans but all very eager and ambitious to start their own business.

Nevertheless women in the MINI Europe regions think of it as an important matter. In this regard a small delegation, consisting of a representative of the Flevoland entrepreneurial rural women and the Flevoland Regional Content Manager, visited the Mid Sweden region to get an impression of rural women in business.

Flevoland has a very big rural area. The farmers wives in this area are very well organized and have an entrepreneurial mindset, want to give the rural economy a boost by working together and make arrangements for tourists to visit the area but there is a lack of experience.

In Jämtland, Sweden the rural women have been doing this for quite a while and have experience in starting up arrangements to promote the rural area. During the exchange several rural business women were visited; the  first visit was at a sheep farm, with over 200 sheep, located in an remote area near a big lake and hills. Tall green trees, a red house and a blue sky complete the idyllic landscape and in the middle of the farm there is a big tipi for meetings and meals. The sheep meat is being sold to restaurants and supermarkets and the wool sold to guests.

The second visit was to a clothing shop in the middle of nowhere but very vivid. Clients from all over Sweden go to this shop and busses of with clients from Norway come by almost daily. The last one was a bookstore and a radio channel.

The delegation was very pleased with all the information gained and were extremely enthusiastic about the diversity and rather unusual enterprises the Swedish women started in the rural areas. Both parties agreed to work together and will try to develop arrangements together in the (near) future.

Exporting…

The Good Practice “Financial Engineering” is a support system, structured by the Veneto Region, to facilitate the credit access in particular to SMEs and to foster the investments in research and innovation. The financial aid in fact concerns only investment in industrial research, organisational innovation, cooperative research and technology transfer through three synergic tools: revolving soft loans, guarantee system and venture capital fund.

This GP has been exported to Impiva and Észak-Alföld Regional Development Agency.On December 2009, the Veneto Region hosted, in collaboration with Veneto Innovazione, a delegation coming from Valencia (represented by Impiva) in a two days visit and several specific meetings to deepen the “Financial Engineering” and “Cluster” programmes focusing on the strengths and the weaknesses. Valencia Region was in fact planning, on one hand, to structure a fund to sustain innovative enterprises and, on the other, to assess the ongoing industrial clusters in order to select the new regional priorities.

On May 2010 was organised by Veneto Innovazione and the Veneto Region a video conference with the Észak-Alföld Regional Development Agency to present the “Financial Engineering” programme and on November 2010 took place also an exchange visit in order to deepen further the its features and discuss on how to implement the practice in the Hungarian context.

The Good Practice “Cluster programme” consists of a specific programme to foster and support the development of productive clusters and SMEs networks. Since 2003 the Veneto Region has launched this programme to take into account and strengthen the spontaneous trend of companies to aggregate together (bottom-up approach), formalise such clusters and provide funding not for their governance itself but for common initiatives focusing in particular on research and innovation.

This GP has been exported to Maramures and Mid Sweden. On July 2010 an exchange visit with Maramures took place in Veneto to deepen the “Cluster Programme”. The meeting was mostly devoted to present the experiences of three different Veneto Region cluster: the Footwear Cluster, the Refricold Cluster and the Nanotech Cluster.At the beginning of September a business exchange took place between Veneto Innovazione and Mid Sweden to transfer the Veneto Region experience in developing clusters in the food sector through case studies and experiences. In fact a Swedish embryonic cluster of small scale food producers asked to be sustained in their strategy to create a well defined brand positioning and so the Prosecco Venetian cluster was chosen as “study case”.

Importing…

The Észak-Alföld Good Practice “Genomnanotech Debrecen Regional Knowledge Centre” supports a better cooperation between universities and SME’s in order to utilize the research results and transfer them to business and industry. It is a novel and streamlined infrastructure created with commercial spirit to protect intellectual property and to promote spin-off and start-up companies, and a management system for easy accessibility with University-wide, global and versatile integration potentials.

The Veneto Region, together with Veneto Innovazione, deepened it though a videoconference on May 2010 involving also the Technology Transfer Office (TTO) responsible at the Ca’ Foscari Venice. The GP has risen the interest of the TTO responsible who is now checking how to adapt part of the model to the Venetian contest.Moreover the Veneto Region wanted to transfer it into one action programme of the Regional Innovation Law: at the moment this exchange process is still ongoing.

The Mid Sweden GP “Summer Entrepreneur” aims to promote local entrepreneurial spirit giving young people the opportunity to launch their own undertakings within the scope of a summer work programme offered by the municipality. The output of this GP is the creation of micro and mini enterprises for practice and development of entrepreneurial attitudes and skills during the summer vacation: young people could create their own “summer jobs”. In June 2011 two Veneto Region officers participated to a “train the trainer” session with a Swedish consultant (three training days) in Manchester to deepen the GP “Summer Entrepreneur” and discuss on how implement it in the Venetian context.

The Veneto Region in fact plans to include the training into the support measure for young and female entrepreneurs which is part of the Regional Operative Programme. The measure is supposed to integrate the programme according to the Swedish GP model.

It was described how Mrs Elaine Owen, with the contribution of Mrs Wendy Bowers from East Lancashire Chamber, finally created the Women’s Enterprise Forum where many women of the area were congregated under an “umbrella” where they could network with other entrepreneurs, they could feel that there are people who respect their work and could have a better access to funds. Mr. Iqbal Patel – Business Development Manager, from the North West Development Agency presented how the ethnic minorities of the area could be supported and how they could boost the local economy throughout their businesses. Nowadays, the Women’s Enterprise Forum consists of a volunteer group of women sharing a passion for encouraging women to become businesswomen and to encourage them in their enterprise development.

These women are focused on research, influencing policy, guest speaking, running women’s business networks and the North West Awards. Furthermore, they represent women in business everywhere and their cluster is continuously expanding at regional and national level. In addition, they carry out surveys, organize special event with informative features and reports.

The main objective of this meeting was to inform the Greek representatives in terms of the Women’s Network activities in the Northwest of UK, its function and how a similar Network can be created in the Region of Western Greece. The initial discussion and exchange of experiences and ideas paved the way for a new collaboration between the representatives of both areas and the creation of a Women Entrepreneurs network in Western Greece. For this reason, Mrs Elaine Owen and Mrs Wendy Bowers have scheduled a visit to Patras on July 2011 in order to help the Achaia Chamber of Commerce and some women entrepreneurs of the area to establish a “Women Entrepreneurs Network” in Western Greece.

Their experience and suggestions are of vital importance in order to meet this effort with success.

Finally thirteen of them could join the Hungarian delegation, which also included the Director of the Észak-Alföld Regional Development Agency. Council members are mayors, vice-mayors of important cities in the region, or delegates of different Ministries. All of them are important regional decision-makers in terms of the main issues covered by Mini Europe as well.

The conference was really interesting and useful – as well as the study visits organised by Impiva. New ideas and possible cooperation options were born as a result of the event and the “brainstormings” taking place during the study visits and the conference breaks.

Members of the Észak-Alföld Regional Development Council highlighted the importance of creativity, which is one of the most important “engine” of SMEs, and the Mini Europe project as well.

Zoltán PAJNA, president of the Észak-Alföld Regional Development Council:

„I believe that the economic development must rely on the activity and creativity of people. The creativity of people is a significant competitive factor, and it plays an important economic role.

(…)

As the president of the Regional Development Council, I find the effective use of the resources in the region, the public-private partnership and the creation of domestic and international contacts important, in order to make the creative sector play a decisive role in the region’s economy.

(…)

The society having the knowledge about the local, regional and national values, and taking the advantage of this, can increase the economic competitiveness of the region. We supported the establishments which helps promoting the development of the IT, which is one of the most dynamically growing sectors.”

Dr. Ferenc KOVÁCS, mayor of Nyíregyháza County Seat, Member of the Hungarian Parliament:

“We have the pleasure to announce that in 2011 Nyíregyháza is the Capital of the Hungarian Song, which is the result of the civil society alliance, initiated by the creative people living in the city. Bordered by three countries Nyíregyháza is the capital of Szabolcs-Szatmár County, and it is also the most eastern city of Hungary. We are a meeting point between east and west.

(…)

Our city is one of the region’s research and development centres. The main base of higher education is Nyíergyháza College, which developed close cooperation with large companies operating in Nyíregyháza in the past decades. It now also appears in the secondary vocational education also, the outstanding example is the LEGO-workshop run jointly by the government.”

Ms. Flo Cucas, Deputy Leader of the Liverpool City Council, vey involved in the early stages of the project, wanted to join the initiative and participated through a video speech, due to her impossibility to attend.

The European Commission collaborated with the event with the presence of Jeam Marc Venineaux (DG Regio), who stressed the importance of territorial cooperation. Marie Lèbre, financial officer from INTERREG IVC also participated.

The good practices studied, shared and transferred during the project took then the floor through the presentations in which members of the partners and experts on each practice explained the experience of each one of them. The Good Practices of Summer Design Office, the iCreo Network, Financial Engineering, Cluster Development and Summer entrepreneur were presented before a very interested crowd.

Mr. Christian Saublens, Managing Director of the European Association of Regional Development Agencies, EURADA, gave the keynote speech “From subsiding to innovative finance of growth in European Regions”. A topic that is on the edge of interest in the European Commission, specially for the new period to come after 2013 and taking into account the needs shown by enterprises and entrepreneurs across Europe.

 The Final Conference of MiniEurope represented a showcase of some the best practices of regional policies in SME development, promotion of entrepreneurship, Clusters and Financial tools, while the experience of the MiniEurope project, with its methodology and experience in transferring and adapting such practices from region to region supposed an important added valued, as agreed by all participants.

Its main objective is to give support for business associations (clusters) formed by SMEs, aiming to innovation and knowledge exchange. Furthermore, it aims to detect innovation opportunities in the main fields of economic activities of the region through a network of professionals working as a think tank.

The Regional Ministry has invested 5,6 million Euro in this initiative that hasgrown in presence since 2006 from the initial 15 to 23 sectors today.

The I-Creo network has been able to generate 650 innovation opportunities for SMEs of the region, which in their turn have articulated the participation of enterprises in 900 national and international projects after 2.500 direct contacts.

Download the ideas for mainstreaming here.