MULTILATERAL NETWORK DEVELOPMENT TO ENCOURAGE COMPANIES GENERATION- MULTINET
Multinet is a subproject within the framework of MODELE project and addresses component 4 (public administration).Consequently, this subproject proposes “To develop an operative network model between knowledge-based institutions and public agents in order to promote, generate and support the creation of new companies within these regions”.
From a long term perspective, this fact would represent the business, public administration and research world’s convergence achieved after decades of low cooperation.
There is a need to articulate support activities in order to increase the number of new companies created by introducing proper mechanisms that encourage an entrepreneurial culture. Few studies were developed on the first place and they have been taken into account in order to develop this subproject. Consequently, this subproject proposes “To develop an operative network model between knowledge-based institutions and public agents in order to promote, generate and support the creation of new companies within the se regions”. This subproject’s long term goal represents the triple helix model. This model explains and represents the business, public administration and research world’s convergence achieved after decades of low cooperation.
The subproject incorporates seven participants: The Navarran European Business Innovation Centre (Spain), The City Council of Székesfehérvár (Hungary) and Imathia Chamber of Commerce (Greece), P.I.T. Vulture-Alto Bradano (Italy), Town Hall of Potenza (Italy), Insular Town Hall of Tenerife (Spain) and the Development Agency of Trenčín Self-Governing Region (Slovakia).
The core objective of this subproject is to set the path towards this triple helix model by developing an operative network. This objective will be achieved by implementing a series of pilot projects that include a great number of activities allocated to each participant of the subproject.
These pilot projects are: the NONE methodology implementation (new opportunities no entrepreneur projects) for Navarra, the setting up of an Entrepreneur’s Ombudsman office for Imathia, the institutional service development for SMEs for Székesfehérvár, Productive policies to improve local development for Alto Bradano and the creation of an intranet for Tenerife.
According to studies S2 and S5 from Navarra, networking secures knowledge transfer from the teaching, scientific and research domain into the business domain. The analysis maintains that networking also favours strategic planning and provides new means for agents to cooperate when implementing internal initiatives within their own regions. Finally the analysis confirmed that networking promotes cooperation with other regions for the development of projects of all sorts. This fact was taken into account when designing the contents of the subproject and that is the reason why the network methodology development has been proposed. This region’s ultimate goal consists of improving the economic development, competitiveness and diversification of the Navarrean business framework. This goal can be achieved by creating more innovative and technology based organisations within the region.
Regarding the Central Transdanubian region, the study's goal for Component 4 was to improve the competitiveness of SMEs. Moreover, the study carried out an organisational development plan for regional institutions dealing with planning and management issues of structural funds. Since it was extracted from the report that an organisational structure development was needed, the institutional and service development for local SMEs (pilot project 2) is proposed to tackle this need. For the last few years there has been an increase in raised capital in Central Macedonia mainly caused by the increase of public and semi-public development bodies and by the strengthening of the existing ones. According to the report, SMEs are the dominant bodies of the productive structure of Central Macedonia. The level of cooperation between the SMEs and the public sector is a factor that slows down the adaptation of these enterprises to the new economic reality.
The Entrepreneur's Ombdusman Office (pilot project 3) will attempt to reinforce the cooperation network between SMEs of Imathia and the local public sector bodies. This network will improve the quality of SMEs and public bodies’ transactions to the benefit of the entrepreneurs.
The Basilicata study identified high bureaucracy as a permanent problem that still has not been addressed. Therefore, by developing productive policies that promote local development (pilot project 4) companies could become more efficient.
Finally the questionnaire made in the Canarian region showed that most of the SMEs do ignore most of the public services designed to help them. Therefore, an intranet system (pilot project 5) would help to coordinate the activities and would improve the network communication and the quality of the service that is provided to the entrepreneur. Again, it was identified a lack of coordination between agents that pursue a common goal.
These pilot projects are the key for this network development subproject.
First of all, regarding SMEs' expansion in Hungary there is a need to organise the existing resources and to improve the capacity at a regional level. Secondly, the Central Transdanubian Regional Operations Plan's development goals depend on the efficiency of the regional organizational structure. Finally the lack of readily raised capital for the SMEs in the region does not allow them to coordinate efficient growth activities by themselves. That is the reason why the institutional service development for SMEs was proposed for Pilot project 2.
Secondly the needs and problems detected in Imathia were: bureaucratic and cost deficient legal structure that characterizes relations between SMEs and public sector services; lack of properly trained personnel; Corrupted relations between SMEs and the public sector; lack of knowledge of SMEs concerning their legal rights and obligations against the public sector; lack of effective and efficient coordination between the local and the central government; low degree of autonomy of the local governance in relation to processing SMEs issues; low GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita and high unemployment due to the poor developmental capacity; Lack of technological development; low productivity and competitiveness.
These needs have been addressed by creating the Entrepreneur’s office mentioned above.
Finally, in Navarra, for the last ten years there has been a network development process that consists of bilateral relationships with some institutions. This interaction produces few encouraging actions that lead to the creation of technology based companies as a result. There is a need of developing this network to a "second stage" where there is a real network development, where bilateral collaboration leads to multilateral relationships between public agents and technology centres. This relationship encourages members’ interaction, their involvement within the process and the knowledge exchange process.
This procedure facilitates the creation of technology based companies and increases the quality of the support that they receive. This network development subproject, together with the New Opportunities No Entrepreneur (NONE) methodology will tackle this need and will test its feasibility in practice. This pilot project will allow to identify its strengths and weaknesses and to recognise the opportunities for the future.
1. General objectives for the Multinet subproject
The general objectives for this subproject are:
1. New competencies development: the knowledge exchange and sharing process will develop new competencies between the partners. 2. Initial analysis of the global state of play
3. Network methodology development to be transferred to every participant.
4. Generate a social awareness within participants to encourage members’ active participation: if the participant’s network is coordinated efficiently, members will act proactively and will collaborate providing useful feedback what will improve the process' results.
5. To achieve a global growth and development by coordinating the participants involved and by taking advantage of synergies between participants.
6. To implement interdisciplinary actions in order to promote the local development of each region involved in the Multinet Subproject.
7. Multisectorial opportunities growth, depending on each region’s specialisation. This objective will provide a broader perspective to every participant bearing in mind that each region has different local policies, needs and concerns and different activity sectors.
8. Network operations development: by having each participant implementing their network methodology, participants will learn from the experience and will be able to share with the rest of the participants.
9. To implement the following pilot projects in order to create local networks to encourage the amount of companies’ generation in each participant’s region:
- Pilot project 1: Network methodology in order to create innovative and technology based companies in Navarra, Potenza and Slovakia.
- Pilot project 2: to develop an institutional service for the development of the SMEs in.
- Pilot project 3: To create an Entrepreneur’s Ombudsman office to increase and improve the services available for entrepreneurs.
- Pilot project 4: To develop productive policies to promote local development focusing on new companies’ creation on the tourism, food and agricultural sector.
- Pilot project 5: To develop and intranet communication tool to improve network's communication in order to standardize the services provided to entrepreneurs.
10. Share of activities and results with other participants.
2. Background for Pilot Projects:
The following part of this report gives an overview on the conclusions extracted out of the Modele reports in order to accomplish specific actions to be implemented in the Multinet subproject.
As it was confirmed above, the studies outsourced in the Modele project have been used in order to extract several conclusions about the actions that could be implemented in order to achieve this goal.
As it can be seen through this short analysis, generally speaking, it has been identified a lack of coordination and network development related to all those services provided to SMEs. Therefore, because different regions have different needs, these pilot projects undertake different actions.
All of them pursue a common goal. However the way the goal is pursued involves different activities according to their particular situation. All participants can learn from others’ experiences, and even more from those experiences ahead. The most important thing is that all these different actions are shared between participants so that participants can benefit out of it whenever is needed.
3. Activities undertaken so far and outputs achieved:
The specific activities undertaken within each work package can be found in detail in the progress report. However, this summary tries to give an overview of those exchange activities that have been implemented between participants as far as the sharing process of information and experiences are concerned always focusing on achieving common goals for the Multinet subproject.
The first action of this kind was implemented for analysing the state of play was the kick off meeting. This transnational meeting helped to understand each participant’s situation that was described. The activities to be implemented were presented and different methodologies used amongst partners were evaluated in order to choose the ones to be shared.
After this identification several exchange activities have taken place.
There has been a bilateral meeting between two participants in order to transfer and exchange useful information. The Mayor of Székesfehérvár invited the project managers of the Town Hall of Potenza in order to exchange their experience.
Since the partners from the Town Hall of Potenza have implemented successfully a one-stop-shop model provided by a public body (town hall/municipality), their experiences and practice have a special importance on the pilot project of the Municipality of Székesfehérvár. Both participants consulted about the proceeding of the MULTINET sub-project and shared their experiences about the pilot projects. Special emphasis was given to the administrative and management issues;
As well as these previous experiences, several experiences have been shared with all the participants such as:
- 3 reports sent by the Municipality of Székesfehérvár: a feasibility report, an institutional framework report and a service framework report.
- A report on the trip to France undertaken by the Hungarian participant. This information has been sent to every participant of the subproject.
- Network Methodology report developed by the participant from Navarra. This report will allow implementing specific actions within each region depending on the existing level of technology transfer.
- Analysis of institutions' network for creation and support of innovative SMEs in Trenčín Self - Governing Region
- Network’s development Methodology for Trencin Self-Governing Region to support creation of new innovative and technology based enterprises
- Report on the main enquiries attended and on the main objectives achieved at the Ombudsman Office (outstanding because it will be more complete at the end of the subproject)
- A study about the Food & Agriculture district as well as a Report on cultural district model study have been developed by the participant from Vulture.
- A social actors map developed by the participant from Tenerife.
- A study trip to the region of Scotland, which had been previously chosen as being one of the best practices analysed in the Modele project. This was a specific action where technology centres and Universities of the region were invited (network members) so that they could identify the specific tools and actions implemented by similar entities of that region
Other deliverables are still pending to be translated in order to be shared between participants.
At a glance, these would be the general objectives achieved through this subproject implementation:
On the one hand, several competencies were exchanged at the kick off meeting and many experiences have been continuously shared through personal communication and email between some of the participants. Besides, some new competencies have been developed by learning from others' experiences. Most of the participants have been very proactive in sharing experiences and disseminating information which has been extremely useful.
The network methodologies have been developed and disseminated between all participants.
Many deliverables are available for all participants as well as for other people interested through the subproject’s website.
All pilot projects already mentioned, have been successfully implemented by each participant involved with all the specific results. The general project’s implementation has represented a great success considering the particular and global results achieved in such a short period of time.
