The Ave Entrepreneurship Network is a program coordinated by CIM do Ave which aims to stimulate the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the Ave Region, promoting and creating synergies in support of entrepreneurship and innovation of SME’s.
This network is developing 3 projects under the "Promotion of Entrepreneurship", "Internationalisation" and "Qualification and Innovation".
The main objectives are:
- To Create an coordinated and universal intervention to support the strategies of qualification, training and innovation of SMEs in the Ave Region;
- To combine a coherent and integrated actions with an innovative character and which aim to achieve concrete results in terms of raising productivity, developing new products and / or processes;
- To aggregate and sustain a network of partners with diversified competences, covering the target territory in terms of supporting SME’s qualification innovation initiatives;
- To mobilise entrepreneurs towards the development of competitive strategies;
- To promote the integration of innovation factors in SMEs across the Ave region;
- To encourage the incorporation of innovation and facilitate the transferability of innovation processes to other SMEs.
Within this project the 1st edition of the Ave Business Summit was organized on the 13th and 14th of March. This event developed a programme for entrepreneurs, companies and investors involved in projects, to make a pitch period to qualified entrepreneurs. The thematic areas discussed included New Economy, Entrepreneurship, Internationalisation, Innovation, Digital Marketing, E-commerce, among others.
On the first day entrepreneurs presented 10 business ideas about competitivity and innovation to potential investors, business angels, regional development agencies, universities; and SME’s. The second day divided the conference space into the thematic areas of New Economy, Entrepreneurship, Internationalization, Digital Marketing, E-commerce and Innovation. During the special sessions a dynamic space was included to promote firms and showcase their businesses, which allowed the entrepreneurs to get to know some of the companies and key sectors of activity in the Ave region.
This was a very dynamic and interesting event where 250 people participated including research actors (universities, technological institutes, research centers; Entrepreneurship actors (chambers, industry representatives, incubators, accelerators etc); Policy making actors (regions, municipalities etc); Open social actors (student’s communities, start-up ecosystems, associations, etc).
• For Further information on Ave Entrepreneurship Network IN.AVE please see http://www.inave.pt/ or contact, by e-mail [email protected]
