The overall aim of SME CoachLT is to increase effectiveness and efficiency of investment in R&D and Innovation by enhancing innovation management capacity of Lithuanian SMEs -beneficiaries of the new dedicated SME instrument under Horizon 2020, and SMEs with significant innovation activities and a high potential for internationalisation. Specifically, the project will support SMEs - beneficiaries of the SME instrument- in identifying project-specific barriers and weaknesses and gaps in their innovation capacities that hinder realization of growth opportunities, and pointing to suitable coaches to address the identified weaknesses. The second specific objective is supporting SMEs with significant innovation activities and a high potential internationalization in enhancing their innovation management capacities. The Key Account Manager will support SMEs SME Instrument beneficiaries in identifying critical issues and gaps with regards to their innovation idea and guide them to relevant lead coach who will support the company throughout their innovation journey. The Key account Manager will use a holistic and dynamic business innovation model, supported by Business Innovation Roadmap Tool, available under Creative Commons License from smE-MPOWER network. Based on the systematic assessment logic embedded in the tool, the Key Account Manager will guide the company through a transparent and easy-to-use self-assessment process. When supporting companies having innovation and internationalization potential, but not part of SME instrument, we will use IMP3rove Academy’s diagnostic tool which measures the performance of the company’s innovation management system. However taking into account the SME context, we intend to use action- based (and case-driven) learning approach to addressing identified gaps in the innovation system. smE-MPOWER tools can support the coaching process.

The one of the main challenges for the start-ups is the lack of funding for their business ideas. And this situation forces them to seek funding from private sources and especially venture capital (VC) funds. Thus, start-ups seek to participate in Business to Investor (B2I) matchmaking events where they can meet investors and have the opportunity to present their business ideas and attract funding for their company through great presentation (“pitching”). Since the competition is very high, companies must prepare exhaustively their presence in such meetings. Start-ups tend to forget to present the important parts of the Executive summary, the presentation is missing crucial data, “elevator pitch” focuses on the wrong matters. Moreover, they need guidance from experienced consultants on how to present themselves better. To assist the start-ups, project partners aim to design a new service to facilitate investment readiness utilizing a new webtool for checking the company’s readiness and proposing an action plan for improvements.

The main aim of Innovators2B is to enhance the agencies’ management efficiency in the field of first time innovators’ service. Three innovation agencies involved in the project will work using twinning+ methodology in order to create valuable Design Options Paper regarding first time innovators engagement into process of implementing innovation. The solutions developed in the paper will be implemented in the agencies as new or improved programmes based on these given approaches. The result of peer learning activities within the project will be an effective approach to identify and convince “potentially innovative companies” to engage in innovation process with the use of external support. It involves designing the whole support process from the identification of the target group, marketing channels, attractive offer, diagnostics of individual needs, consequent support delivery and follow up of the process till successful result. The results of the project will be communicated to regional and national authorities as the topic of monitoring SMEs needs is very common with regard to efficiency of policies aiming to enhance SMEs competitiveness, especially their growth on national and international markets as well as their engagement in innovation processes.

Following international evidence that shows that a small number of high-growth firms are vital for job growth and overall economic growth, and the European Commission's Start-up and Scale-up Initiative, Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) launched in 2017 a new flagship service to support scale-ups. However, innovation agency services are in too many occasions standardised and do not take into account the rapid evolving entrepreneurial ecosystem and the advanced needs of scale-ups. Innovation agencies across Europe need to be ready today to deliver advanced assessment services to scale-ups and be able to offer support tailored to their needs. The objective of Scale-ups Ready is to enable the participating innovation agencies to exchange knowledge, know-how, and good practices on advanced methodologies and tools for scale-ups assessment (including SMEs with high-growth potential) and customised support services, in order to develop better approaches for client intake and support of scale-ups. Based on the Twinning+ methodology, the project aims to cover peer-learning and peer-review activities for three kinds of services through specific assessment instruments that when combined offer in-depth analysis of the needs of scale-ups, in order to provide them with tailored support: 1) An advanced IP valuation scheme, IPscore® 2.2 (FORTH), 2) An advanced business innovation roadmap tool, smE-MPOWER ‘Business innovation roadmap tool’ (LIC), 3) An advanced Innovation Health Check assessment tool (FUNDECYT-PCTEX). This peer-learning and peer-review scheme has been developed based on each partner's identified competences and gaps in advanced services for scale-ups. The result will bring in new added-value service offerings to participating organisations, will lead to better approaches and the adaptation of tools to the specific national/regional contexts. The Design Options Paper will be shared with other EU innovation agencies and networks, and with national and EU policy-makers.

Innovative SMEs are most likely to create new markets, achieve rapid growth, and help the economy recover. External finance may be particularly important for innovative SMEs, as they usually lack the internal resources to successfully commercialise innovations. However, innovative SMEs often find it the hardest to obtain finance because they tend to have riskier business models, which are important to create new markets but are also difficult for banks to value. Innovative SMEs are often more reliant on intangible assets, rather than physical property, but intangibles are difficult to value as they are context specific, and thus hard to use as collateral for lending. AccesSME project is dedicated to contribute tackling this issue. The objective of the project is to enable the participating innovation agencies to cooperate in a tangible and cost-effective manner so as to improve existing or create new concepts, methodologies and tools for SMEs on access to finance through mutual learning and exchange of good practices. The project aims to cover three kinds of access to finance options: 1) Business to business (B2B) matching for partnerships and investments 2) Horizon 2020 SME Instrument 3) crowdfunding platforms.