On the 7th of February Lithuanian partner, Kaunas STP, organized its 5th regional stakeholders’ meeting at Kaunas STP facilities, Kaunas. Event has been attended by 10 people: representatives of SMEs, business support sector. First of all, Kaunas STP made an overview of the concept of FFWD Europe and laid out the main achievements reached by the project consortium so far.
As it is one year left until the end of the phase one, the aim of this meeting was make first steps in the development of the Action plan and to get stakeholders‘ group involved in the process.
Members of Kaunas STP team took part in the „Webinar on designing Action plans“ organised by the Interreg Europe office in January 24. Therefore, Irma Bagdonienė (Kaunas STP) made an overview of the information she got and presented not only the theoretical part, but also the good/bad practices of the development of Action plans in another regions Europe wide. After this, Kaunas STP’s initial intentions in improvement of policy instrument (Lithuanian Innovation Development Programme 2014-2020) stated in the application form were presented. The presentation was followed by a short discussion about the results achieved by the Programme so far. Participants expressed their concern that the team of the policy owner, the Ministry of the Economy and Innovation of the Republic of Lithuania, has been replaced for several times during the period of the FFWD Europe project.
All stakeholders agreed that at the moment the focus should be put on staff exchange activities. As Kaunas STP is directly interested in business acceleration processes, especially in accelerators supported by the governance/EU and how to switch such accelerators to self-sustained entities in the future, institution has chosen two good practices to visit: FFWD Normandie (France) and High Growth Innovative Enterprises (Hungary).
At the end of the meeting all attendees were informed about the next steps in the project and promised to keep stakeholders’ group updated regarding project activities.
