This second stakeholders meeting gathered 14 participants who tried to identifiy a list of proposals to improve the support offered to companies in scale-up/acceleration phase, overcoming weaknesses and/or enhancing the potentialities of each ecosystem.
The discussion started around the gaps and opportunities of the local ecosystem: the stakeholders agreed that they can count on a well structured ecosystem, in particular concerning the start-up phase support measures, meanwhile there is less focus on services focused on the scale-up/acceleration phase. The participants highlight that often emerge a weakness in the market risks analysis, which inders the business growth. The University incubator underlined that they pay a lot of attention to this issue for the enterprises they follow.
Then, the participants discussed about the elements characterizing a strong ecosystem, useful for the growth process of the companies. These elements are: the presence of main players and well-established companies, good physical and digital infrastructure, a well structured system of research and innovation, the presence of performing business accelerators, a vibrant and stimulating social community, availability of private investors, strong talents creation and attraction capacities, an enabling and mature public sector. The following points emerged from the discussion:
o There’s a good physical and digital infrastructure but there are still a lot of mountain / peripheral areas not infrastructured enough and not well connected to the urban area
o There are some big companies but often they are not the driver of the acceleration of the local startups. The big companies have the management center elsewhere and they do not dialogue with local startups and innovation system
o There are some interesting private accelerators but there’s the need to improve the network among them and the dialogue with the public sector
Then the participants shared some good practices aimed at helping the enterprises acceleration phase:
o Unione Industriale Torino illustrated one of their initiative called BROAD P.I.T.T. (Piccola Impresa Trasferimento Tecnologico). Broad P.I.T.T. is an innovative project that provides a support plan for SMEs to help them develop structured product and/or innovation plans. Its an example of how to make a system to match supply with demand innovation, in a pragmatically and passionately way.
o Réseau Entreprendre is a non-profit organization, composed by expert entrepreneurs, who gives free help to the start-ups. Réseau Entreprendre members give their time, free of charge, helping the would-be entrepreneurs to define their business creation projects.
