Engaging Small and Medium Size Enterprises in European Union Funded Research and Development Projects
نویسندگان
چکیده
in Finnish Päivämäärä: 11.3.2012 Kieli: englanti Sivumäärä: 73 + 16 Avainsanat: Pienet ja keskisuuret yritykset, tutkimusja kehitystoiminta, EU, innovaatiopolitiikka AALTO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING PO Box 12100, FI-00076 AALTO http://www.aalto.fi ABSTRACT OF THE MASTER’S THESIS Author: Atte Harjanne Title: Engaging Small and Medium Size Enterprises in European Union Funded Research and Development Projects School: School of Electrical Engineering Department: Department of Communications and Networking (Comnet) Professorship: Networking technology Code: S-38 Supervisor: Professor Jukka Manner Instructor: MSc. (tech.) Mikko Riepula The European Union has stated ensuring competitiveness and sustainable growth and development as strategic goals for the next decades. Both small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and new ICT-innovations are seen to have a significant role in reaching these goals. This is reflected also in the premises of the Future Internet Public Private Partnership (FI PPP), a collaborative R&D programme funded under 7 Framework Programme. This study has been conducted as a part of CONCORD project, which is responsible for the coordination of the FI PPP programme, and aims to find and present means to improve the quantity and quality of SME engagement within the Framework Programmes, FI PPP and individual projects. The study combines extensive literature review and empiric part consisting of interview research. The literature used consists of both academic sources and previous reports and investigations on the topic. The interview study consisted of 16 semi-structured thematic interviews. The interviewed experts represented different key stakeholders reaching from entrepreneurs to officials and from interest groups to researchers. As a conclusion it can be stated that active SME engagement is justified, but needs a lot more effort. The key challenge is that while large corporations and research institutions typically have extra resources to be devoted to collaborative R&D projects, SMEs typically lack them. Also the administrative burden is considered heavy and unawareness of opportunities decrease the interest towards EU funded R&D projects. Altogether, it is difficult for an SME to assess whether participation is beneficial or not. As a response to these challenges, this study presents three new approaches and recommended measures for European Union, FI PPP and individual project level. The three approaches stem from the need to acknowledge the special needs and restrictions of SME, to design interaction via communicative interface and to attract the relevant SMEs by using value network concepts to build effective and attractive projects. Although any changes on the EU scale take time, the flexibility and coordination within FI PPP give the programme good chances to succeed in SME engagement. Date: 11.3.2012 Language: English Number of pages: 73 + 16
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