SO11 Entrepreneurship

Key Information

Summary

The common challenge in AT and HU is the existing shortage of skilled labor in technical professions and the low proportion of women in technology (AT 15% and 10% HU). The availability of qualified staff will be a key to the competitiveness of the economy even more than in the past. One approach is to activate the potential of women to technical professions to get interested in.

Targeted objectives:

• reducing the shortage of skilled employees


• increasing the proportion of women in technical professions


• intensifying the networking of SMEs /intermediaries /educational institutions


• increase the image of technical jobs.

Together and CB an innovative "CB service package for SMEs" with two application areas will be developed and tested.

1 Technical experimental modules (fields of strength in AT/HU metal- and electrical-, and energy technique, IT and process-oriented robotics)

2 Attractive tour guides for factory visits.

The challenge is to adapt for different user groups:

• female students between 6 - 15 years


• job-orientation teachers and educational colleges.

The pilot activities are the implementation of the technical modules (active, experimental, practice-oriented insight into technical jobs) and company visits based on the guide lines developed in the project. Employees in SMEs are involved in workshops to launch and implement the service package. At the same time a CB "knowledge platform" will be built.This new Peer Review Group PRG will ensure the quality of the project and bring in their experience, needs and ideas in addition. The actors of the PRG:project partners (4 Intermediary Business Support Organisations and 2 education institutes) and SMEs as well as other intermediaries, social partners, experts, educational colleges, schools and role models. Due to the different competences and strengths of the project partners and SMEs, a reciprocal effect arises and creates an important added value. Objective ist to strengthen local companies in AT/HU

Key Information

Summary

Numerous national and international research and studies have highlighted the importance of female entrepreneurs in economic life. Although the number of female entrepreneurs is on a mild path of growth, they typically face more difficulties in setting up and running a business than men. However, the underrepresentation of female entrepreneurs in the economy is typical. Typical difficulties include: access to finance, training, networking, and reconciling business and family, all of which are prominent in the program area.

Despite several initiatives that have been set in motion in recent years to support female entrepreneurs, there is still no specific training or advisory program to support the economic situation and competence development of female entrepreneurs in the program area, to improve on their steady development in a focused manner at the AT-HU border region, to set the expansion of their development prospects in motion.

In this project, an international consortium - with the partnership of the two HU PPs - uses a complete mentoring methodology supported by a multi-module training program developed earlier, and puts it into a cross-border structure, focusing on a challenging and updated mentoring methodology to address the more challenging challenges in the program area. Then, in two mentoring areas, recruitment, preparation and bilateral relationship building take place, the mentor-mentee pairs are formed, and the mentoring is completed. Its special feature is that its results are summarized and utilized several times on a bilateral level. With the participants of the mentoring process and the PPs as founding members, the cross-border FEMskill community is established and its online platform is created.

Communication activities are completed by raising awareness to female entrepreneurs and women in the economy.

Key Information

Summary

Digitalization is bringing enormous challenges for the businesses across all sector. The challenge could be overcome only by a structured, systematic approach, which is integrating all potential enablers of the transformation. Highly populated areas, big cities have an economic of scale for assisting this transformation – like new platforms, shift in the automotive from diesel to e-mobility or new technologies (like 3Dprinting or data science). This phenomena is affecting both the Austrian and the Hungarian companies.

By linking organizations dedicated to digital transformation from both sides of the border, the necessary pool of knowledge could be gained and contribute to the successful transformation of the companies. It will assist the cross-border interactions, meanwhile also upgrading the individual technology transfer organizations competencies.

• a complementary service portfolio of the digital transformation organizations – later called digital innovation hubs (DIH) – will be elaborated,


• joint methodology will be worked out for measuring technological maturity and digitalization potential for the individual companies,


• case studies will be realized to provide proof of concept, with cross-border service offer,


• internationalization of the network, integrating with policy stakeholders from various levels will be achieved.

Those DIHs are selected for the Improve! partnership, which are regionally, nationally or internationally appointed/accredited innovation hubs. These hubs alone do not have and cannot have the full spectrum of competency – from metal 3Dprinting through maturity audits to digital twinning or Nanoprinting -, therefore their integration is essential.

Digital Innovation Hubs are the strategic vehicles on European level for Digital Europe and Horizon Europe programs.

By connecting them in a cross-border way, with evidence of the service quality validation, a flagship project can be realized on EU level. 

Key Information

Summary

The wood-processing and furniture industry is the most important sector of Western Transdanubia, Southern Burgenland and Eastern Styria. The latter is one of Europe’s research and innovation centre. This industry is being supported by several economic developments and cluster organizations on both sides of the border, the R&D&I capacities and the higher education are given. There have been only a few attempts to solve cross-border problems between these organizations, so the available experiences have not been used reaching across borders.

The SMEs of this sector are less prone to use new technologies, innovations and to cooperate with other companies and organizations. A lack of management attitude, the difficulties presented by a generation shift, incomplete market knowledge all cause a lacking innovation effort, so breakthroughs are sporadic. At the same time a shift in consumer needs and in the macro environment force a new international appearance with new products. The presence of knowledge and a source of raw material along the border make cooperation, and reaching new, international markets possible.

The overall project objective is to strengthen the innovation based international competitiveness of SMEs in the border region AT-HU, operating in the wood-processing and furniture industry. Discovering operative cross-border cooperation opportunities, expanding the market knowledge, knowledge transfer, developing innovative niche („market niche”) products, the marketing system necessary for commercialisation, an environment that stimulates innovation are all areas of common opportunities for the region. For activities that are being realized, the cross border value added is the measure of value.

Key Information

Summary

The REGIONET initiative has set up a model of regional and cross-border cooperation between SMEs in the border region Austria-Hungary. As a result of this networking based structuring of the regions, the cross-sector and cross-border business relations of the border region have been able to budge from their stagnant state. Simultaneously, despite the cross-border efforts, the created networks are in the majority of cases only active within their own core regions. The cooperation between entrepreneurial networks is only limited to solving individual economic issues, they are not strategically dispositioned, and as an effect, the opportunities lying in strategic cross-border cooperations are not being utilized.

The impulses of open and motivated entrepreneurial networks tremendously strengthen the international competitiveness of enterprises. To make better use of the opportunities provided by cross-border cooperations aimed at strategic economic development, the networks are being reshaped with the involvement of economic development organizations to regional entrepreneurial initiatives, that form four bilateral economic development groups in the immediate border region thereafter.

As a result, the entrepreneurial networks will be able to venture outside of their own (regional-national) economic zones and will be able to cooperate more effectively, hence they can step in a catalisator role to spur the market growth of SMEs’ of the border region.

The strategic cooperation of bilateral economic groups for development, the establishment of cooperations yielding sectoral, innovation stimulating opportunities and the activities aimed at improving entrepreneurial competencies and establishing international business relations strengthen the international competitiveness of the border region’s SMEs.

Key Information

Summary

The project area covers in Austria the county Burgenland and in Hungary the Zala county. The number of Roma and Sinti in this region is large and they often face the disadvantages of discrimination. In the context of our project we would like to emphasize those Roma and Sinti, who run a small business and are in a vulnerable situation. They need encouragement, professional support and competence development to stabilize their economic circumstances. The aim of the project is to increase the 3 years survival rate of Roma and Sinti SME through intensifying the cooperation among these enterprises and between these enterprises and institutions as well as through improving their managerial skills and entrepreneurial competencies. We will start the project with a personal survey to identify the characteristics and expectations of Roma and Sinti entrepreneurs in order to enable collaborative institutions to improve their services accordingly. This survey will serve as a basis for the prepararation of the consultants as we really consider it important that the curriculum focuses on issues that are of interest to the entrepreneurs. The trained consultants will provide support to the entrepreneurs through individual coaching and mentoring if required. We will also offer group coaching workhops for the development of professional competencies. Roundtables and study trips to learn best practices will facilitate the exchange of experiences and the networking process. Furthermore, an innovative internet-based roma entrepreneur platform will be established and equipped with mobile applications. The Roma enterpreneur will have the opportunity to present their business here and also other relevant information will be uploaded to this platform.

Key Information

Summary

Small and medium-sized businesses from agriculture, trade and tourism form the economic basis for the rural regions along the border between Austria and Hungary. For those businesses it is getting increasingly difficult to compete with big international companies and retail chains. In order to survive in the long term, they must open up new markets outside the rural boarder region. The urban / metropolitan areas offer larger market opportunities. Many companies have recently tried to enter these markets online. To be successful, physical presence on site is also required. This is hardly affordable for small businesses. However, experiences of the partners have shown, that collaborating across boarders and developing a convincing concept makes things possible. The aim is to develop and open up a shop, which offers culinary delicacies, fine handicraft products and unique holiday from the Austrian-Hungarian border region. Customers can taste regional specialties, try local products and discover authentic holiday experiences. The prerequisites are created in this project in cooperation with all relevant actors from economy, agriculture and regional development agencies. The first step is to built up cooperation with the regional small and medium-sized companies. Supported by renowned experts, a professional market research is carried out and a detailed concept for a model shop in the Vienna Region is developed. Regional organizations and companies will develop a joint support structure and fix detailed implementation steps for the shop in Vienna. Based on this, a general model is developed that can also be implemented at smaller locations. So that this common vision becomes reality, not only in Vienna, but also at other locations.

Key Information

Summary

Although innovation potential is high and economic performance exceeds the EU average in the program region, innovation performance results lag behind the EU average values. The overall objective of the project is to strengthen young enterprises (<5 years) with mentoring and coaching services and to help them to increase innovation performance on long term, to establish a cross-border business (start-up) community in order to support long-term innovation and business cooperation across the border.

As a result, active business cooperation is established among the young and start-up enterprises, R&D action plans tailored to specific SME needs will intensify the use of research infrastructure and know-how. Utilising project services, young SMEs can improve market and financial results and identified R&D possibilities ensure a strong base for long-term successful existence and operation. Start-ups receive targeted mentoring services, innovation management knowledge of young entrepreneurs increase, and as a main result, survival chances of young enterprises increase considerably. The final beneficiaries of the project are young enterprises on both side of the border. In the frame of the project individual (mentoring, coaching, and consultancy) and joint group (workshop, company visits with Austrian and Hungarian participants) events will be organised. Innovation performance of young SMEs will be assessed by the same method in both regions, therefore results can be compared and evaluated (such survey does not exist). The establishment and operation of the cross-border business community for young SMEs is a unique element that can become a best practice even on European level. All methods used during idea-selection, joint validation by Austrian and Hungarian businessman, common trainings, during the formation of possibly mixed (AT and HU participants) pilot teams can be utilised by the partners also on long term.

Key Information

Summary

In the programme regions AT HU, smaller enterprises from the service sector face major challenges. There is an urgent need to bundle resources, exchange knowledge and build up know-how, as well as to establish new sustainable networks and initiate cooperation with digitalisation providers.

This project is not about big innovations, but: We want to initiate effective cross-border cooperation and show service companies and also Business Support Organisations a new cycle by competently using the opportunities of digitalisation.

The focus is on: To recognize the cross-border added value and benefits of digitalisation and to find efficient ways to process with the wide range of available information on the subject of digitalisation in a meaningful way and to supply it to the target groups and subsequently initiate digital transformations and processes.

Benefits: How do we bring existing data and trends into new contexts and use them to develop new solution concepts? It is expected that the interactive events and the interdisciplinary integration of actors from different fields will result into regional and cross-border cooperation between service companies, digitalisation providers, start ups, BSO and experts, which is a good input for the entire innovation system in the regions of AT HU and at the same time has a positive influence on the regional and cross-border value chains.

Core output: a new CB network TRENDIG, a new knowledge transfer FORMAT TRENDIG, "good practice" TRENDIG - realised CB cooperation between service providers (6) and digitisation providers (6) - focus digitisation and transformation processes.

Key Information

Summary

The south of Burgenland and the south of Vas County are economically underdeveloped regions. Small and medium-sized enterprises in these regions hardly ever cooperate and there is a lack of networking across borders. The enterprises face similar challenges on both side of the boarder: generational change, lack of internationalization, rural flight etc. Development opportunities for these economically underdeveloped regions are culinary and wine tourism and the transformation of old wine cellars to accommodation. Yet, a sustainable, coherent, and innovative offer is needed to develop and establish a wine experience region across borders. Such an offer can only be developed by small and medium-sized enterprises if they are connected and if they coordinate the range of services they provide. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the importance and vulnerability of the small and medium-sized enterprises. Our goal is to foster economic development in the region and increase the survival rate of small and medium-sized enterprise in the border region. This will be achieved by connecting, advancing, and re-establishing small and medium-sized enterprise in the border region. First, we will assess their needs. Afterwards, we will organize tailored trainings, marketing operations, and networking opportunities to encourage emprises to be proactive. We will also support enterprises as they develop and promote competitive products. The current project is innovative because it develops a network of small and medium-sized enterprises across borders and sectors. It connects wineries, tourism enterprises, direct marketing farmers, restaurants, bakeries, and many others. The project focuses on a specific region and additionally involves the local population via awareness building. The project follows the Farm to Fork strategy of the European Green Deal. By fostering the purchase and consumption of local products it tackles climate change and preserves biodiversity.