On September 10, the second local stakeholder group meeting in Friuli Venezia Giulia region has been organized by Friuli Innovazione, the Italian partner of Innova-FI project. Representatives of the regional managing authority, financial institutions, business angel network, chamber of commerce, university and other business support organizations participated at the meeting.
Josanco Floreani, professor of corporate finance at the University of Udine, illustrated the state of art of financial instruments in Friuli Venezia Giulia region that has been highlighted by the mapping exercise performed in the framework of Innova-FI. After the presentation, the stakeholder’ perceptions on the architecture of financial instruments in the region have been assessed thanks to the questionnaire developed by Innova-FI partnership. During the discussion on financial instruments in the regional and national context, some of the major shortcomings of the ecosystem have been highlighted, namely the difficulties of business financing in the early stage, the high dependency of SMEs on public guarantees and the lack of managerial skills and entrepreneurial culture.
During this second meeting, the stakeholders have been inspired by the good practices discovered in Lithuania in term of use of alternative financial instruments as crowdfunding. Diego Angelini, representative of Friuli Venezia Giulia region, who participated to all the first three exchange of experiences has underlined how Innova-FI project is giving him the valuable chance to get inspired form the peer-learning with the other European partners. Diego Angelini also updated the participants regarding the new guarantee fund for investments in VC that the region is developing and which, hopefully, will be activated by the end of October 2019.
