Good practice:

Thematic Voucher (Innovation, I&D…)

The main objective is to support the Micro and SME to incorporate innovation, efficiency and circular economy into their work processes and methods by promoting process innovation, reinforcing dignity and recognizing the ceramic ancestral art as lifelong and therefore environmentally friendly.
It was created to: facilitate the access of micro and SME, exclusively, to funding to; simplify the bureaucratic process of analysis, approving and reporting.
Vouchers are used to develop innovative actions covered by the thematic of the call and are consulting projects, which involve the preparation of a business plan, studies, among others, with a view to their applicability
All sector SME´s can access these funds, must have at least 3 or more workers and have no debts with national authorities. These calls usually are open in the beginning of the framework program and in last years they were maintain open in continuum.
Vouchers are short projects 1 yearlong with a limited budget of 20000€ used to hire specialized consultancy in the area that the SME need to develop the innovation. It is easy to propose a project and to approve a project to funding and normally is very effective to answers the current innovation goals of SME. It was designed to improve the competitiveness areas of the regions and is managed by the Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCRC-C), so the applications usually are subject to thematic area to be improved in the region.

This practice involves the management authority, the consulting entity (recognized by the Management) to implement the project action, the companies (which must bear 25% of the costs of a maximum of 20000€of project budget) and its manager.

The demand by micro and SMEs has been increasing and the areas of intervention covered by the Vouchers have been expanded. New areas of priority intervention have already been launched, such as I4.0 and Circular Economy Vouchers
The evaluation of 2020, reported that 1020 SMEs had access to Voucher funds and not exclusively ceramic companies with no data available yet.

Vouchers are for companies with a minimum of 3 people they cannot be used by individual artists, this is not a real constraint but rather a requirement. This could be a point to analyse if it could be applied to artisans and artists. It’s difficult to give awareness of this to these stakeholders.

The project is easy to implement and develop in the companies and is adapted to their needs, integrating in the normal work process of the company in order to solve problems they had or to support the putting into practice improvements that feels their needs so it answer quite well the company needs.
It does not extend much over time, maximum 12 months so it requires a strong commitment and involvement of the company in its implementation promoting the active involvement of the various actors
It does not require a very high financial effort on the part of the company (25% of a maximum of 20000€), minimizing the risk of companies participating in the use of these projects to promote improvement and enabling / motivating them to want more, consolidating internal innovation practices