The Community, through the European Business and Innovation Center of Murcia (CEEIM), has created a Regional Reference Group with institutions, business organizations and a group of private investors to test how they value the lines of support to innovative grassroots companies (EIBT's) in the Region.
The initiative is part of the European Fast Forward Europe (FFWD) project, which is part of CEEIM, aimed at strengthening the competitiveness of the business community by enhancing EIBTs in an international framework.
The project will identify the best practices on consolidation of EIBT's SMEs from each of the seven European partners participating in the plan. The regions of Normandy (France), Nordjylland (Denmark), Közép-Magyarország (Hungary), Piemonte (Italy), Lietuva (Italy), and Lietuva (Italy) participate in the FFWD project, co-financed with ERDF funds through the Interreg Europe Program. Lithuania) and Podlaskie (Poland).
This initiative also seeks to improve the operational program for investment, growth and employment by increasing the efficiency of the use of the ERDF Funds for the development and improvement of regional policies on the competitiveness of SMEs within EU countries.
Current vision of the regional situation
As stated in the meeting, all the participants had agreed on the fact that it has been a great growth in the main thematic areas of the Project in the Region of Murcia.
Yet, it was proclaimed that is currently being strengthened in a more pronounced way phases of creation of companies than intensify support in growth phases –without abandoning the entrepreneurs-. In other words, the actions are mainly focused on early-stage or seed-stage and there is no impact on the rest of the phases of the company, so, there is some disregard of the already formed SMEs.
It was also said, that it has been a budding signs of growth of new funding platforms that are displacing traditional platforms. Anyway, the accompaniment in search of financing of the entrepreneurs is quite low.
Nowadays, it exits several agents that work and collaborate in the topics of this project, however, there is a real lack of coordination between them and it is unknown if they work under the same clear joint objective.
