Create Ireland

I attended FP7 info session for SMEs (FP7-2010-1 Call Promotion) yesterday. Very good presentation from EI’s Sean Burke I thought. The EI FP7 team seems to do a good job.

Here are my notes:

- IRL tops 09 call

- 70% of SMEs were micro-enterprises (less than 10 employees I think)

- Direct SME funding relates to three areas: 1) Industry-academia, 2) Research for benefits of SME, 3) Regions of Knowledge

- 81 Irish SMEs got a total of 20mm in direct grants related to total worth of 350mm in projects ; pretty good ratio of 17.5% to develop & access European-wide IPR

- Irish proposers have an highly impressive success rate of 27% in 09; 104 Irish organisations across 89 projects.

- Two types of potential proposers: SME and/or SME associations that propose a project including RTD-performers (academia and/or companies) and other companies and/or end-user groups

- Project from SME proposer is between one and two years and involves between 5 and 10 partners

- Project from SME association is between two and three years and involves between 10-15 partners

- Project outputs are R&D, demos, and management

- Focus of project impact

- Eligible costs and direct and indirect costs

- It is possible for 4-employees company to lead a project

- External project manager can be hired

Why should SME consider this:

- Get into R&D that involves your partners, suppliers, and customers.

- Disseminate IPR based on a vertical European network

- Value: allocate company time and get a potential of 5 times its value in granted R&D money

- Have strong tested tech prototype for pre-sales

- Banks funding & VC money is nowhere to be seen these days

- Anchor project that raise profile for a SME

http://www.fp7ireland.com/ for more info, Fred

More than 25 topics will be covered by the Create Programme between September 2009 and August 2010. The outline below is being developed specifically for small digital media companies that need to kick-start their business development asap. It also covers areas of growing importance - innovation, policy-making for the sector and SMEs, and R&D - in an economy that needs to be more competitive both nationally and internationally. The outline is also developed for a dynamic entrepreneurial sector that needs to get relevant support from semi-state agencies. New Create businesses to be promoted in the coming weeks will become more aware of the following topics: Business Planning - Sales Management - Branding & Marketing via Online Channels - Presentation Skills - Time & Project Management - Online Advertising/SEO - Social Media Platforms & Principles - Blogging - Starting-Up a Digital Media Company - Digital Media R&D - Proposal Management - Digital Media Stakeholders & Policies - Leadership & Partnership Management - IPR for Media - Digital Media Trends - Gaming - Programming & Database Environments - Mobile Media Content & Platforms - Design - Usability This training can only do so much for selected companies. They’ll need to be flexible in testing and proving their development over the next 12 months. Their partnership model will be important to build medium-term value beyond the downturn. It’ll be full on from our first session on September 8th.

I’ve met most of new Create participants for one-to-one assessment meetings before the programme begins in September with my induction session. I’ll introduce participants in September.

The Create Enterprise Platform Programme is starting its 6th year in September and has now significant number of past participants to fully-develop clustering objectives like thematic sessions, networking, skills exchanges, and internal and external project collaborations.

In the meantime, I’m looking to increase the level of skills and knowledge communicated via training sessions and mentoring sessions. Skills can be applicable to high-level business development, specifics business issues and/or digital media services.

I value a lot trainers and mentors inputing their info as there’s goodwill in helping companies confirm their early business development. I brief trainers and mentors on specific needs and no bad feeling if termination between mentors/mentee occurs. It hasn’t so far over last 5 years. I keep all info confidential and fees of sessions are not the sole factor driving assignment of trainers and mentors. There’s more than 25 trainers/mentors in our cluster so far.

So go on and take two minutes to answers this questionnaire:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pcEWkV1F3SgPcmNJeSTpzCA

Thank you, Fred