Good practice:

Ave Entrepreneurship Network IN.AVE

Ave Entrepreneurship Network is a program and aims to stimulate the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the Ave Region, promoting and creating synergies in support entrepreneurship and innovation in the SME’s. This network is developing 3 projects under the "Promotion of Entrepreneurship", "Internationalization" and "Qualification" in 3 areas of RIS3 that characterize the economic activities of the region: "Culture, Creation and Fashion" and "Agro-environmental Systems and Food", which is associated as a transversal area of initiatives to support the domain of "Symbolic Capital, Technologies and Services of Tourism ".The objectives are: Create and stimulate a support network for SMEs in the Region that will provide specialized tools and services to support companies, fostering the modernization and introduction of innovation factors, at product level and process level; aggregate and sustain a network of partners with diversified competences, covering the target territory in terms of supporting SME qualification innovation initiatives; Develop integrated actions around the "knowledge, training, cooperation" axis, which will reinforce SME 's innovation strategies in Region; encourage the incorporation of innovation and facilitate the transferability of innovation processes to other SMEs. The main stakeholders of this practice are the policy making actors, Research and the Business actors and open social actors of the region. The beneficiaries are the entrepreneurs and the SME’s.

The programme is coordinated by CIM do Ave. Around 700.000 €, all the activities and human resources costs.

19 applications of entrepreneurs to participate in Advanced Entrepreneurship Training Program; 11 technical workshops; 250 participants on the Business Summit Event -conference about New Economy; 30 companies present in the business show; 10 presentations of the entrepreneurs about their business ideas; technical sessions of regional qualification (innovation of product and process; marketing; cooperation and competitivity) with 80 participants; Training to 25 SME’s of the region.

The transferability potential for this good practice is high and should take into account:
• Encourage them to seek supports and training which would increase their knowledge and grow their business
• Effective practice transfer must include the establishment of a strong local collaboration among the representatives of the 4 helix pillars, namely:7
1. Research actors (universities, technological institutes, research centres etc)
2. Entrepreneurship actors (chambers, industry representatives, incubators, accelerators etc)
3. Policy making actors (ministries, regions, municipalities etc)
4. Open social actors (students communities, start-up ecosystems, associations, etc)