The main aim of Innovators2B is to enhance the agencies’ management efficiency in the field of first time innovators’ service. Three innovation agencies involved in the project will work using twinning+ methodology in order to create valuable Design Options Paper regarding first time innovators engagement into process of implementing innovation. The solutions developed in the paper will be implemented in the agencies as new or improved programmes based on these given approaches. The result of peer learning activities within the project will be an effective approach to identify and convince “potentially innovative companies” to engage in innovation process with the use of external support. It involves designing the whole support process from the identification of the target group, marketing channels, attractive offer, diagnostics of individual needs, consequent support delivery and follow up of the process till successful result. The results of the project will be communicated to regional and national authorities as the topic of monitoring SMEs needs is very common with regard to efficiency of policies aiming to enhance SMEs competitiveness, especially their growth on national and international markets as well as their engagement in innovation processes.

In order for the European Union to be successful in implementing and expanding open innovation as one of the main drivers of its socio-economic growth higher education institutions (HEI) must be able to produce independent, creative, entrepreneurial individuals, who understand inter- and multidisciplinary challenges of the socio-economic environment and as a result can contribute to open innovation. HEIs also have to develop action learning methods that bring the social/economic problems into the classroom along with the relevant stakeholders to facilitate co-learning and co-creation between students, professors and the stakeholders (businesses, policy makers, society) with a particular problem. Students and academics have to learn, perform research and co-create with busniess as well as with government and the society in accordance with the open university concept and the Triple Helix model. EU’s success in the global competition is also heavily dependent on the ability of the economy to produce innovative enterprises with high growth potential that can give stimulus to the actors of the socio-economic environment; can stabilize the labour market; can strengthen the small and medium size enterprise sector and can creatively work with the HEIs. Creating a common framework and a unified entrepreneurial ecosystem across the EU that includes HEIs as the engine of open innovation, inequality among the regions of the EU can be decreased.The main objective of the NetMIB is to facilitate the efficient cooperation between the public - private - governmental sphere of the economy in order to enable socio-economic growth via the development of entrepreneurial skills, capacity of university students. This general objective involves the improvement of the quality and relevance of the teaching methodology at the participating HEIs to develop entrepreneurial capacity of university students. The project consortium consists of two research institutions, three HEIs, one being an overseas expert in the field and one university lead sceince park as members. The consortium is further supported by associated partners who are part of the knwoledge triangle at each local ecosystem and will benefit from the improvement of the local and the establisment of a transnational entrepreneurial ecosystem. The research insituttions have conducted extensive research activities in the field of educational methodologies, while the HEIs have been implementing state of the art entrepreneurship educations tools and methods to enhance socio-economic benefit of their activities.The methodology used in the project's implementation phase is based on the following 5 steps process1) Investigation/research (literature review, interviews and questionnaire survey) on the 2 main domains tackled by the project (entrepreneurship education/incubation practices and Governance/rewarding systems) with the aim to give a solid scientific and operational foundation to project operations.2) Design & development. Starting from the results of the previous phase (best practices) an entrepreneurship and virtual incubation program was designed and the related teaching materials was developed along with a set of recommendations to anchor the program into the HEIs structure and regional environment. An ICT platform to support the virtual incubation program and to connect students/teachers/coaches participating from the different partner countries has been set up.3) Capacity building. Academic trainers from the partner organizations was selected and a capacity building session was organized to prepare them to deliver the program making use of the teaching materials (Program Toolkit) and of the ICT platform developed.4) Testing & fine–tuning. Partners (UTA, UP, Espaitec) has been asked to organise a pilot of the program by selecting each of them a specific block to be tested.5) Disseminating & Exploiting.

Public innovation agencies strive at keeping the pace of SME innovation demand and traditional grant-based models remain the main source to fund research and innovation. However, public innovation agencies seek opportunities to implement supporting schemes pivoted on new approaches. Similarly, European policy makers at all levels experience a lack of robust evidence of the impact of both existing and new supporting models. 200SMEchallenge project will allow a selected set of innovation agencies to set up, implement and scientifically evaluate the impact and the effectiveness of a novel SME innovation support initiative; on the basis of the results, a complete Guide will be delivered and disseminated to make it possible to a larger set ot innovation agencies to take up the piloted scheme, and possible scale it up to other domains. The piloted support initiative has the format of an Innovation Challenges (a.k.a. innovation prize). In particular, the proposed Challenge aims at impacting on SMEs awareness on the benefits of adopting design thinking and user-centric design validated practices (e.g. the Design Sprint) to the extent of validate market fit and technology requirements during the early stages of a new product development (NPD) process. In order to meet such goals project partners will first build capacity to execute the Innovation Challenge, building on guidelines to be developed by an INNOSUP-05 H2020 project (INNOCHALLENGE), as well as from the know-how gathered during previous small scale pilots of the initiative. The experimental rollout of the novel scheme will be framed as the intervention action of an overarching RCT (Randomized Control Trial) study, which will overall involve 200 SMEs. By doing so, the project will deliver sound evidence of impact of the experimental initiative, and validate it as a new SME innovation policy tool.

The project was implemented in the context of the European-wide development of the innovative entrepreneurship ecosystem. Partners include 5 technoparks (mersin technopark, tartu, madan, espaitec, step c) and an entrepreneurship school (IStec brussels)All partners carry out studies to develop the entrepreneurship ecosystem on a national and transnational scale. Entrepreneurs' motivations for the development of mentoring, which is one of the greatest needs in overcoming the difficulties in realizing their ideas, ensured the establishment of this partnership and the emergence and successful execution of the project.The project generally aims to train qualified mentors for young technology entrepreneurs. Achieving this general goal has been possible with the realization of 3 chained goals. These:1. Training experienced business people who have successfully completed their entrepreneurship processes on how to mentor young technology entrepreneurs and bringing new mentors to the ecosystem2. Providing mentoring activities by matching young technology entrepreneurs with mentors3. Raising awareness about mentoringThe project has 3 main groups of participantsTrainer mentors: This group consists of experienced mentors and provided training to mentor candidates.Mentor Candidates: It consists of experienced business people who have been in the industry for at least 5 years, with or without mentoring experience, and who are motivated to mentor.Young Tech Entrepreneurs (Start-Ups): The participants in this group are young entrepreneurs who have just started their business life and need mentor support in various fields (hard or softskills).The definition of young here refers to the entrepreneur's experience in realizing the business idea, not his age.In addition to these main participant profiles, different institutions that are actors of the entrepreneurship ecosystem have been included in the project activities. These:universitiesNGOsInstitutions like Chambers.The project team implemented the activities determined in the proposal in order to achieve the objectives determined in the proposal period, by making improvements when necessary in response to the changes that took place during the project.Accordingly, the general activities of the project are as follows:Conducting needs analysis and reporting to identify the needs of mentors and entrepreneurs regarding the mentoring processesConducting a comparative study of mentoring processes across EuropeOrganizing national Workshops in every countryPreparation of Curriculum for Mentor Training TrainingRealization of the Training ProgramPreparation of project reportsConducting transnational project meetings and post-COVID online project meetingsHolding the Dissemination ConferencePreparation of the e-PlatformMaking mentor-mentee pairingsWith the project, trainer mentors, mentor candidates and start-ups from all partner countries were reached, and the common problems and needs of mentors and mentees were determined. Thanks to the project, the goal of raising awareness about mentoring was achieved. And one of the ultimate goals of the project, raising new mentors, was achieved after the training, and then mentor-mentee matching was ensured, enabling start-ups to reach the support they needed in areas such as realizing their initiatives and commercializing their products, sales and marketing.

"The ""MIND - Marketing, Internationalization & Development"" project aims to:• carry out a process of transnational cooperation to analyse, design, test, validate and disseminate a European framework for the qualification of the Vocational profile of International Marketing Manager to:a) support SMEs to define internationalisation processes to define strategies to choose the foreign country/market, the entry methods and correct positioning with respect to the competition, the most suitable communication strategies, particularly as regards agro-food products;b) analyse internal and external resources to identify market opportunities and relative strategies to adopt;c) determine the international marketing strategies based on an analysis of competition and market segmentationd) guide SMEs to define export plans, on the basis of competitive strategies and marketing.• reduce the mismatch between the demand for skills of production systems and the provision of training offered by VET actors • facilitate access to a plurality of online OER, even after project end, for at least 3 years, to allow people to acquire/consolidate the organizational/managerial, commercial, relational and marketing skills, functional for strategic planning of international SME projection.These objectives will be fulfilled by:1) ANALYSIS OF TRAINING NEEDS, defining the vocational profile of the International Marketing Manager, divided into skills, denominated and described in the knowledge and skills/abilities, indicating the EQF level, the expected results and indicators of possession and use. Through the organization of the Focus Groups, the profile will be shared with:a) representatives of a group of agro-food SMEs, to ascertain whether the knowledge and abilities/skills described are really considered necessary, in order to define even the minimum standards of possession/exerciseb) a group of people representing the target group (long-term first time job seekers/unemployed, with degrees in economic subjects), to identify the average level of knowledge and exercise of skills/abilities of planning and management skills in international marketing for SMEs, on which to base the contents of the OER.2) CREATION OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES, that constitute the “MARK.UP-MARKETING UPSKILLING” multimedia product, to develop/reinforce project beneficiaries’:a) knowledge of:• Success Factors and factors that influence foreign markets• Segmentation Strategies of international markets• Positioning strategies• SWOT Analysis• Competitor analysis• Strategies to enter and work in foreign countries• International Marketing Mix Strategies • Drafting an Export Planb) ability of:• analysis, • strategic thinking, • negotiation, • programming, • organisation,• decision making,• results orientation,• initiative,• propensity to new things,• forward thinking, • managing uncertainty and difficulties3) THE CREATION OF THE ""MAR.CO - MARKETING COMPETENCIES” LEARNING ENVIRONMENT, a Knowledge Hub featuring educational materials and operational tools, able to help people acquire the skills and competences of the reference vocational profile.4) TESTING OF OER, TEACHING MATERIALS AND INTERNATIONALISATION SUPPORT TOOLS by a group of beneficiaries to develop the skills of the target vocational profile, in order to:- make early corrective measures to learning contents and/or methods of use, in a logic of fine tuning for subsequent dissemination to the general public;- acquire the knowledge and skills needed to conduct a check-up on SMEs businesses interested in international business development5) CONDUCTING A COMPANY CHECK UP to understand the ways and means to be used to guide SMEs in the strategic routes of entry, development and permanence in international circuits in relation to:- analysis of internal resources (human, financial, technical) and competition- support in innovation- selection of foreign markets with the highest potential- definition of export plans- definition of International marketing mix strategies 6) CONSTRUCTING ""MIND STORY"" A DIGITAL BOOK, to narrate the actions carried out, the results achieved, the personal and professional experiences of beneficiaries, the information collected with the business analysis, including (video) interviews with testimonials expression of the partnership reference territories"