Fablabs – digital fabrication laboratory – enable creation of new enterprises, offers an environment supporting innovation, and makes prototyping more available and affordable. Nowadays, FabLabs are increasingly being adopted by schools, universities and museums as platforms for project-based, hands-on STEM education. Despite the fact FabLab is great tool supporting technological prototyping and fostering entrepreneurship and innovations, there are only a few innovation agencies in Europe which included this platform in its services for SMEs. Therefore the main aim of the proposed project FABLABIA – Fablab as entrepreneurship supporting tool for innovation agencies is to gather the experiences of innovation agencies who use FabLab as an innovation tool for the benefit of SMEs and to turn it into a codified good practice manual (DOP). The proposed project will have a direct positive impact on SMEs’ capacity in rapid prototyping and product testing. Innovation agencies will help these individuals with market research for their solutions. On the other hand, project will have impact on innovation agencies too. It will lead to improvement in the design and quality of delivered innovation support services. In the process, the FabLab business model and its adaptation to the local conditions, will be explored. This approach will facilitate the uptake of FabLab-based services for SMEs by any interested innovation support agency beyond the consortium members. In this way the project will contribute to raising the level of innovation support provided to SMEs throughout the EU.

Unlike most European countries, Romania does not have yet a general cadastre. Such a deficiency represents a critical element for the economy of the country, since it makes legal contracts, such as land purchasing, very difficult to be implemented. Starting from such a complex scenario, CENTRIC aims –in the long term- at the creation in Romania of the new Centre of Excellence on territorial management and cadastre. The future Centre will focus on related domains of great relevance, such as: 3D/4D geospatial data, linked geospatial data, land classification, remotely sensed data, etc. In particular, the goal of phase 1 of the project (the 12 months CSA) is to prepare a very detailed business plan leading, during phase 2, to the establishment of the Centre including: a long-term vision and the mission of the Centre, a detailed SWOT analysis of the domain of territorial management and cadastre in Romania, a long-term scientific and innovation strategy, a market analysis, the Business Concept of the Centre, the analysis of possible cooperation, strategic alliances and long-term partnerships, the operational and financial plan of the Centre, to define a strategic growth roadmap. Furthermore the project will also aim at the creation of a suitable ecosystem at the national Romanian and EU level, through a number of capacity building and dissemination activities. The whole project has been based on the creation of long-lasting (beyond the 5-years duration of the overall “Teaming” project) joint venture between partners from both advanced and low performing countries, including institutional cooperation among the Romanian Cadastre agency and the counterpart in Trentino Italy considered as a best practice at the EU level. The project is aligned with the Romanian Smart Specialisation Strategy and it has received a clear commitment from the Romanian Government to provide financial resources for infrastructural and equipment costs for phase 2.

InnoCreate is an ambitious coordination and support action aiming to stimulate the growth of the creative industries in Europe by overcoming challenges at individual SME level (small size, problems with access to finance, barriers to new market entry…), at the innovation support level (disparity in availability and quality of support) and at overall creative industry level (fragmentation, localisation…). InnoCreate will respond by networking innovation support players and harnessing their regional strengths into a European ecosystem of supports to respond more effectively to SME needs. Two specific end user groups of SMEs will be targeted through InnoCreate: creative industry SMEs exploiting advanced technologies and ICT SMEs innovating in the field of creative industries. Both of these target groups will be equally supported. SMEs will benefit from an imaginative programme of communication and support actions: InnoCreate will piggy-back on the Creative Business Cup to raise awareness about the ICT Challenge competition, network SMEs throughout Europe at the InnoCreate International Camps and provide customised one to one supports for the most promising SMEs with high growth potential. InnoCreate galvanises existing structures by bringing together three strong existing European networks – EBN, CKO and the ECB Network and a network of innovation multipliers at regional level. The InnoCreate service offering aims to be immediately accessible online and ‘on-site’ in 15 EU partner and associate partner countries with a target of engaging further stakeholders to deliver the support services in all EU member states by the project end. The impact of InnoCreate will be tangible – for individual SMEs, for innovation support actors and for the growth of the European creative industries as a whole.