Significant advances in Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies, commonly known as 3D printing, over the past decade have transformed the ways in which products are designed, developed, manufactured, and distributed. This poses new challenges for SMEs, especially in terms of becoming aware of the benefits of AM, as well as acquiring new skills and personnel. While withstanding such transformations, according to the European Commission, public innovation agencies strive at keeping the pace of SME innovation support demand, and seek opportunities to implement programmes pivoted on new approaches. At the same time, new innovation support programs leveraging on Open Innovation working models such as Innovation Prizes and hackathons (a.k.a. Innovation Challenges) has been piloted throughout Europe, gaining evidence for improving SMEs awareness of benefits of novel technologies and innovation methodologies. Project INNOADDITIVE aims at improving the knowledge and know-how of innovation agencies about successful support initiatives that proved to impact on the adoption of Additive Manufacturing technologies in SMEs. A special focus will be given to track initiatives adopting innovative and lean formats of Innovation Challenges. This will be done by tracking existing initiatives in the field (in the three partnering regions and beyond), and then sharing relevant know-how during three peer learning workshops organized by the three project partners, and targeting an audience of innovation professionals. Ultimately, the project will deliver an actionable Guide on how to design novel Innovation Challenges capable of accelerating the adoption of Additive Manufacturing technologies by SMEs.

The Swedish consortium working with Enterprise Europe Network will deliver services within the action ”Establishing services enhancing the innovation management capacity of SME’ in the Enterprise Europe Network” during 2014 and onwards. This proposal only covers services to be delivered during 2014 even though services to involved SMEs will proceed in 2015 to 2020. The project will involve six partners where The Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth will be the coordinator. Swerea, Acreo and Centek will be the partners delivering services, both as Key Account Manager and as Innovation Specialists. Partners ALMI Mitt, SIK and Uminova will be involved in a reference group together with the NCP for SMEs. This application consists of four work packages: WP0 Integrate the KAM and EEN Innovation specialist services with the national supporting system for innovation and H2020 WP1 Provide Key account management (KAM) services for the beneficiaries of the SME Instrument WP2 Provide Innovation specialist services for selected SMEs to enhance their innovation management capacity. WP3 Manage the WP processes, tool development and training In total there will be six employees from Swerea, Acreo and Centek that will be delivering the services in WP 1 and 2 during 2014. The estimated number of SMEs participating in 2014 are 50 were 10 is coming from the SME Instrument and 40 will be selected for innovation management services. The selection will be made by a reference group in consensus to ensure that selected companies have a high growth potential. We will take into account both branch experience and geographic closeness to be able to signpost clients to the most appropriate partner. The tool to be used for enhancing innovation management capacity will be IMP3rove. The tool to be used by the staff working as KAM will be decided upon before the start of the action. All staff involved will be trained in using the tools before start.

Although entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behavior have been proposed by EU and national policy for long time, it has been hard implementing it in the education system. There are frameworks for what should be focused (e.g. EntreComps entreprenurial competence framework), but educators seem to struggle with how they should work as frameworks on pedagogical and didactical aspects of entrepreneurial education are lacking. To support educators at all levels in the education system that want to work entrepreneurially, we will develop a framework for organizing studies entrepreneurially (FOrSE) with two main parts. First, a pedagogical strategy outlining the principals that guide the design and implementation of entrepreneurial education and second general guidelines for how to work entrepreneurially in practice (e.g. how to craft tasks, lead processes or design examinations). To accomplish this, three higher education institutions in Finland (University of Lapland), Latvia (Riga Technical University) and Sweden (Luleå University of Technology) will work together with three other partners (LTU Business (working with competence development) and UF Norrbotten (a Junior Achievement organization) in Sweden and VITAE (working with teacher training for in-service teachers) in Latvia). Altogether, there will be about 35 active participants working to develop and test the pedagogical strategy and guidelines by working both nationally and transnationally. The core project group (one person from each partner) will work closely during the entire project period and meet on-line (e.g. through Skype or Zoom) every month and face-to-face every fourth month. The extended project group will meet three times during the project for learning/training sessions. Between these transnational meetings, there will be national activities. The extended project group is used for practical validation of the results. For scientific validation of the results, central parts of the pedagogical strategy and guidelines will be presented at scientific conferences. The final results from the project is the FOrSE pedagogical strategy and FOrSE Guidelines that we will disseminate broadly to educators in Europe. The main target group is educators at university or upper secondary schools. We believe the potential for impact on both short and longer term is great as educators lack tools to work entrepreneurially practically and in a coherent way.

Successful growth companies tend to be significantly better at innovation management than average. However, most SMEs and SME support organisations consider the inability to manage innovation processes efficiently and effectively as one of the most important barriers to create European economic impact (competitiveness, growth and jobs) from innovation activities in SMEs. The objective of this project proposal is to address these problems by providing services enhancing the innovation management capacity of SMEs wishing to develop innovation projects with a strong European or international potential. All three partners active in this proposal are partners in Enterprise Europe Network under COSME (SweNet) to assure fully integrated services and a true one-stop-shop for business and innovation support to SMEs. Consequently, synergies with COSME activities are easily identified. All innovation experts will also have a role as both KAM and EIMC providers and synergies will be handled effectively. Each client specific needs will be prioritised during the client journey ensuring that we will make the best use of our resources, including the local, national and EU ecosystem.

Successful growth companies tend to be significantly better at innovation management than average. However, most SMEs and SME support organisations consider the inability to manage innovation processes efficiently and effectively as one of the most important barriers to create European economic impact (competitiveness, growth and jobs) from innovation activities in SMEs. The objective of this project proposal is to address these problems by providing services enhancing the innovation management capacity of SMEs wishing to develop innovation projects with a strong European or international potential. There are two SME target groups that will receive 74 7-day work packages. 1. 37 SME beneficiaries of the funding schemes SME Instrument, Fast Track to Innovation (FTI) and Future and Emerging Technologies Open ( FET-Open) under H2020 will be supported by Key Account Managers (KAM); and 2. 37 SMEs with significant innovation activities and a high potential for internationalisation will be supported by EIMC experts to ensure that the innovation management capacity of the SME is increased The specific objectives related to the first target group are to ensure that SME beneficiaries of H2020 can exploit their full innovation potential. A KAM will identify weaknesses in the innovation capacities of the SME, identify suitable coaches who will address the identified weaknesses and facilitate the SME- coach interaction. The specific objectives related to the second target group are to ensure that the innovation management capacities of the SMEs increase. An EIMC export will carry out innovation management capacity assessments, set up an action plans to address identified bottlenecks and implement the action plans. Five partners: IVF, Acreo, RISE, LTU Business AB and Invest in Skane will carry out these services and all of Sweden will be covered (i.e. all three Nuts 1 regions). The coordinator, Tillväxtverket, will have the overall responsibility.