The objective of the project is to enhance the innovation management capacity of Estonian SMEs. The action is aimed at two kinds of SMEs - beneficiaries of the SME Instrument of Horizon and SMEs with significant innovation activities and a high potential for internationalisation. For beneficiaries of the SME Instrument, the service package (the Key Account Management service) consists of identifying weaknesses in the innovation capacities of the beneficiary; identifying suitable coaches (based on the assessment in the first step) to address the identified weaknesses and moderating the coach-client relationship; and accompanying the beneficiary through the SME Instrument project. The service packages outside the scope of the SME Instrument (the “Enhancing the innovation management capacity of SME's” service) consist of carrying out a diagnostic audit of the selected SMEs; and developing and implementing a tailored action plan to improve the SME’s capacity to manage innovation processes. Within the current action, the ESTINNO-NET consortium aims to provide the 7-day service packages to at least 15 SMEs.

The objective of the project is to enhance the innovation management capacity of Estonian SMEs. The action is aimed at two kinds of SMEs - beneficiaries of the EIC pilot and SMEs with significant innovation activities and a high potential for internationalisation. For beneficiaries of the EIC pilot, the service package (the Key Account Management service) consists of identifying weaknesses in the innovation capacities of the beneficiary; identifying suitable coaches (based on the assessment in the first step) to address the identified weaknesses and moderating the coach-client relationship; and accompanying the beneficiary through the EIC pilot project. The service packages outside the scope of the SME Instrument (the “Enhancing the innovation management capacity of SME's” service) consist of carrying out a diagnostic audit of the selected SMEs; and developing and implementing a tailored action plan to improve the SME’s capacity to manage innovation processes. Within the current action, the consortium aims to provide the service packages to 50 Estonian SMEs.

The 24-month Womenture project aligns its efforts with the European Commission's objective to create interconnected, inclusive and more efficient innovation ecosystems across Europe that draws on the existing strengths of European, national, regional, and local ecosystems and pulls in new, less well-represented stakeholders and less advanced in innovation territories, to set, undertake, and achieve collective ambitions towards challenges for the benefit of the society, including green, digital, and social transitions. The overall objective of the project is to empower innovation agencies and accelerators to generate and embed new joint services and activities into their initiatives to boost female entrepreneurship and women innovation in the participating ecosystems. The consortium brings together innovation agencies and accelerators from strong, moderate, and emerging innovator regions with the aim to support women innovators, spread the entrepreneurial mindset, present them the already existing initiatives of the partners, projects, and networks dealing with women innovators and connect each other. Through the delivery of its activities (co-creation, co-design, co-assessment, capacity building, business support programme, innovation ecosystem hub creation), the project will result in enhanced connections, strengthened and more effective capacity of innovation ecosystem actors, improved visibility and increased involvement of women innovators in innovation initiatives towards economic development and growth.

The main project’s aim is to enhance the agencies’ management efficiency in the field of seeking the ways how to attract innovative SMEs by using emerging communication and marketing tools and facilitating interaction and partnerships with various actors of innovation ecosystem. Four innovation agencies involved in the project will work using twinning+ methodology in order to create valuable Design Options Paper regarding communication, branding and marketing strategy for strengthening the position of innovation centres on the national as well as on the international arena as a high value added business support organisations. 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 developing an effective approach to identify new topics in the field of communication, find the attractive methods od engaging inovative SMEs and put them into practice. It involves designing the whole proactive marketing process from the identification of the target group, marketing channels and campaigns, attractive offer, diagnostics of individual needs, consequent support delivery and follow up of the process till key performance indicators. The results of the project will be communicated to regional and national authorities as the topic of reaching the right SMEs 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.

The project focuses on the engagements of existing and needed mechanisms to empower the EIP on AHA ecosystem and the cross-border scale-up of tested and ready-to-use applications towards healthcare. Project brings together supply and demand actors to create sustainable model for innovation scale-up, its integration with stakeholders and the needs for systemic change. Service providers as start-ups, SME-s and large industries need the support of ecosystem, incl. health clusters. Demand actors as health care institutions, health centres, local governments are responsible for service provision to ageing communities and elders. Well-designed cooperation mechanisms in frame of agreed model facilitate regular exchanges between the demand and supply sides as well as whole network, enable to identify the barriers and improve the innovation process in local as well EU level, incl. cross-border deployment of innovations. The role of the policy and whole ecosystem is to encourage innovators to step up with user-centred strategies and transformative solutions. This may lead to the need for change in ecosystem operations to gain the success with mHealth solutions for AHA, more smart age-friendly homes for longer independent living or chronic disease management. Our goal is to identify and support the most important innovation ecosystem elements and encourage the relations between functioning actors by addressing the challenges of innovators in market uptake, and expansion in the domestic and cross-border markets. To reach wider commitment to investment, leading to successful and cost-effective implementation of digitally-enabled, person-centred care solutions, co-creation among policy and ecosystem actors towards long-term investment strategy for more investments into cost-effective digitally-enabling healthcare solutions, is needed. Administrative capacity of regional authorities to support innovation through strict and clear procedures should correspond to supply and demand.