EU4Digital events highlight priorities to boost innovation and start-ups incubation

To boost the performance and growth of the innovation and start-up incubation ecosystem in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) region, EU4Digital Facility identified key priorities and presented them in two events. These online awareness sessions concluded intense study of Eastern partner start-up ecosystems’ performance, gaps and needs. Participants in the two events heard from regional ecosystem actors and discussed the key needs: Eastern partner countries should prioritise the empowerment of ecosystem builders and capacity building of incubators. 

The first event, ‘Importance of supporting national ecosystem builders’ actions through donor funding’ took place on 18 July 2023. This event explained the essential role of ecosystem builders and the need to empower them. 

EU4Digital has analysed 24 Eastern partner organisations that are adopting the role of ecosystem builder to create, empower and boost the ecosystem. Jesús Lozano explained that this study revealed a need for further specialisation of ecosystem builders by specific sectors or target groups. Though ecosystem builders can be both from the public and private sector, they mostly have been acting as non-profit organisations. This is why they need support from governmental and international donors, but also from the conscious private sector – given that creating organisations and developing strong networks are resource and time consuming.

Donor funding plays a critical role in capacity building and empowering of the national ecosystem builders, Jesús highlighted. He emphasised that support should be channelled in a way that: involves national organisations in collaboration and the implementation of actions; builds expertise at the national level; and generates continuity in any ecosystem development actions. The mission of government and donors is to empower the capacity of specialised actors to support innovations in the country.

The second event, ‘The role of the private sector in the development of the high-performance incubation in the EaP countries’ took place on 8 August 2023. This addressed the need to rethink the concept and advance the efficiency of innovation incubators in the Eastern Partnership region. It specifically targeted large corporations, banks, representatives of academia and incubators, and gathered more than 100 participants.

Talking about best practices, the EaP roundtable speakers shared the need to support team building, for example by concentrating on matchmaking and the mutual discovery of different potential founders. They also highlighted the value of using a problem-oriented approach in generating new support programmes, a hands-on approach and learning by doing in educational programmes, understanding the inner motivation of each start-up founder, and taking an individual approach to mentoring and accelerating of each start-up team.

Both awareness-raising sessions highlighted the role of partnerships between innovation ecosystem actors in building high-performing ecosystems with efficient and impactful innovation and business development ‘pipelines’ or ‘highways’, as well as service toolkits for start-ups and scale-ups. More information: https://eufordigital.eu/eu4digital-events-highlight-priorities-to-boost-innovation-and-start-ups-incubation/