IBI Net

The project ‘Intercountry Business Incubators’ aims at establishment and strengthening of the transnational business incubators’ network. The network will be a forum for sharing the knowledge and technologies among partners from Latvia, Poland, Belorussia, Sweden, Germany and Norway. The project idea roots in the necessity to increasing the quality of services, efficiency and sustainability of business incubators in BSR as essential agents in nurturing and supporting development of new and innovative SMEs. Strong SMEs play a vital role in creating jobs and fostering growth to help EU overcome the current challenges with the slowdown of economy and fulfil Lisbon goals.

The project has a strong transnational cooperation focus where all project activities are jointly planned and implemented by seven partners representing six BSR countries: Riga Planning Region and Riga Technical University (Latvia), Teknikdalen Foundation (Sweden), the City Commune of Elblag (Poland), Centre of Technology Western-Pomerania (Germany), Innovation Centre Hedmark (Norway) and Scientific Technological Park ‘Metolit’ (Belorussia).

The project entails four Work Packages:

1. ‘Project Management and Administration’,
2. ‘Communication and information’,
3. ‘Establishment of IBI Net’ and
4. ‘Capacity Building of IBI Net’.

Main results of the project are:

1. Quality and efficiency of business support services, especially those provided to innovative and export oriented SMEs, strengthened;
2. transnational cooperation network of business incubators established and strengthened fostering entrepreneurship in BSR sharing transnational know how and expertise;
3. business support services in partner countries strengthened using the best practice examples and benchmarking.