The STIM-SME Project
The aim of the project is to ultimately foster new business creation in the industrial sector of the participating regions. In order to do so, the project will develop methods and tools to identify and verify high-potential projects in industrial SME’s and to facilitate and support the process of developing these projects into new business ventures (including spin-outs, licensing, joint ventures, new products, etc).
STIM-SME is a trans-regional pilot project that will involve a number of highly qualified organisations inside and outside of the lead partner’s region dealing with innovation and new business creation. The project will benefit from collaboration with other on-going regional innovation support projects.
The SME’s that make up the vast majority of firms (typically 97-99 % of the company population). SME’s in general have little spontaneous contact with academia or public innovation support actors (Western Sweden RITTS, 2001) and focus mainly on their day-to-day activities, often out of sheer necessity. This means that they are mostly out of reach for the typical public business-creation stimulation activities such as the incubators. STIM-SME will focus on how to improve this situation by facilitating and accelerating commercialisation of new ideas in SME’s