by Panagiotis Konstantinopoulos, Vasileios Loukopoulos, Dionysia Mylona, Maria Veneri, and Konstantinos Bastas (Patras Science Park S.A.)
The Greek experience from operation of Science and Technology Parks (STPs) has demonstrated that the most important factors affecting operation of an STP are capacity building, and lack of funding for support of a wide range of services. A novel mechanism that will act as a Distributed Local Cluster is proposed for application in Balkan and Southern European countries.
Mainstream current support services [1] for startups range from training/mentoring, seed funding, acceleration, supply of workspaces and admin support.
However, reflecting on the starting of the development of Science and Technology Parks in Europe (in the 1970s), the situation was much simpler, and the range of offered services, beyond incubation, was limited (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Historical account of supporting services for startups.
Patras Science Park (PSP) [L1] was established on the outskirts of the port city of Patras, at the centre of an RTD and innovation ecosystem, following the model of Incubator. Over the years, PSP extended its range and developed a number of added-value services. Two major problems have been identified concerning these services, related to sustainability and capacity building:
• Sustainability of operations, beyond the main incubation activities, is offered spontaneously, implemented mostly through funded projects.
• Capacity-building of existing staff, tenant startups’ and other SMEs’ key personnel is obstructed, due to lack of funding for the Greek STPs.
It is notable that these problems are common for most Southern European countries and, even more intensely, in the area of the Balkans, where lack of relevant infrastructure for supporting startups is more visible than in most EU member states.
Step 1 – The SPREAD2INNO Project
The gap between the Northern and Southern European countries or between the strong and moderate or emerging innovators has been identified at EU level, as well as its adverse consequences (HORIZON-EIE-2021-SCALEUP-01-01 Call [L2]).
PSP participated in the above Call, as partner in a consortium consisting of leading organisations in the area of acceleration services towards startups, namely, Fondazione E. Amaldi (I), as Project Coordinator, Fraunhofer IPK (D), Teseas (I), Cleantech (BG), Minds & Sparks GmbH (A), including the Brussels-based European Business Angels Network (EBAN).
SPREAD2INNO [L3] brought together different innovation stakeholders – incubators, accelerators, innovation businesses, research organisations, consultancies and networks. The goal was to implement a scalable, replicable and holistic two-year programme for provision of high-quality business services, and collaboration between different entities of well-connected and less-connected regional innovation ecosystems, with immediate impacts at the local and EU level. In this context, the partnership implemented a set of activities such as six local events [2] including training courses, development of an online platform as a single point of reference for information exchange between different innovation ecosystems, two intensive training academies, and a one-week business case and investor training for six finalists.
Two out of the six local events were implemented in Greece:
• The first one took place on 24 and 25 May 2023, in Thessaloniki, co-organised by PSP and EBAN, in parallel with the EBAN Annual Congress for 2024.
• The second one took place on 26 and 27 November 2023, in Patras, in parallel with the 8th Annual Patras IQ Fair.
The two academies were implemented in Bologna (I) and Sofia (BG), in parallel with WMF 2024 and Spinoff Bulgaria 2024, respectively, with participation of a total of five Greek startups. Two Greek startups were selected for participation in the final step, i.e. the Startup Week one-week training and personalised mentoring, which will conclude the SPREAD2INNO project activities.
Step 2 – The Distributed Local Networks (DLNs)
During implementation of the SPREAD2INNO project, it became evident among the PSP team that the task of supporting startups should be viewed in a more holistic manner, considering local weaknesses, and combining efforts and resources between all relevant, as well as interested, local stakeholders. The idea was to form “Distributed Local Networks-DLNs” that could cooperate, creating formal or informal networks, which could undertake jointly the task of providing support services to startups and SMEs. This way, the spectrum of services could be extended, the associated costs for the stakeholders could be lowered, and the startups could source the required services locally.
Testing of this novel methodology has already started by PSP, and will be demonstrated in nine different regions, in Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia and Albania, with funding from the Interreg ADRION programme (project A4SUSTINNO).
Step 3 – Distributed Local and Interregional Networks
At the end of the A4SUSTINNO project, the local networks (DLNs) will take advantage of existing links with investors and support organisations, through the SPREAD2INNO activities, and especially the EBAN and other pan-European networks, creating a network, which will be supported by dedicated web platform for information, matching, and diagnosis of needs and weaknesses (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Novel mechanism for supporting startups.
Links:
https://psp.org.gr/
https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-eie-2021-scaleup-01-01
https://www.spread2inno.eu/
References:
[1] “Business incubation – from startup to scaleup, A Policy Brief from the Policy Learning Platform for a smarter Europe,” Apr 2024.
[2] G. D’Agostinis, L. Scatena, E. Lombardi, K. Singer-Coudoux, H.N. Buxmann, P. Konstantinopoulos, D. Haskovic, and I. Todorova, “Challenges, disparities and risks of the European innovation system: the SPREAD2INNO project to bridge the gap,” 74th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Baku, Azerbaijan, 2–6 Oct 2023.
Please contact:
Panagiotis A. Konstantinopoulos
Patras Science Park, Greece
