Last 25th and 26th of January, FFWD Europe consortium had the chance to officially launch the project in the kick-off meeting, held in Caen (France).
FFWD Europe will contribute, during the coming 5 years, to improve partners' policy instruments, and to enable SMEs to participate in public supported accelerator models in order to significantly enhance their competitiveness through access to private funding and equity; international markets opportunities and new business contacts all over Europe.
Just for letting you know about the Programe framework, Interreg Europe is based on the experience exchange to improve the European regional development policies, primarily those related to the Investment of Growth and Employment. Projects financed by Interreg Europe are intended to the development of an Action Plan in the field of such projects, where measures and initiatives will be implemented in regional and/or national policies and strategies.
In our case, FFWD Europe will offer EU partners regions (Normandie, Nordjylland, Región de Murcia, Közép-Magyarország, Piemonte, Lietuva and Podlaskie) the opportunity for policy learning through the exchange of good practices on consolidation of innovative and technology-based companies. It will allow us to identify the best practices in the regions of the partnership. This project focuses its action plan on three different fields: access to finance, business growth through accelerator programs addressing export and international development.
During the meeting, partners participated in the Interregional Thematic Workshop, focused on subtheme 1 “Accelerators models”, where participants presented their best practises on this field. The aim of the workshop was to inspired each other based on partners existing initiatives, what will be an important contribution for the future definition of the regional Action Plans.
Furthermore, partners attended the Normandy Investors Day in Le Havre, having the opportunity to get to know in first person the FFW'Day, one of the best practices of the Lead Partner, where took place the pitchs of the 10 companies selected in the Fast Forward Normandy . The event was also a great chance to meet regional stakeholders.
Let's continue exchanging and learning! =)
