Innovation and Creativity Mentality Advancement in SMEs

Globalisation has created an extremely competitive environment, where faster pace of innovation is a critical to success. We are at the era of the knowledge based society, in which knowledge itself, incorporated in every product around us, which is the result of a chain of development processes, is a fundamental element of competitiveness. All EU member states demonstrate a percentage of SMEs over 99% (EUROSTAT 2015). If the EU wishes to retain its global position and to improve it against competition, it has to enhance creativity and innovation at that level. INCREMENTA project goal was to develop a set of training materials and tools addressing the development of an innovation management system, based on the new CENT/TS 16555 standard (Part 5-Collaboration management and Part 6-Creativity management) as released in 2013. This system addressed the needs of European SMEs. The INCREMENTA partnership consisted of the University NUI GALWAY (IE) as applicant, the university CULS (CZ), IDEC (EL) an LLL center and consultancy, TREBAG (HG) and KISMC (BG) consultancies on innovation subjects, FCI (ES) an innovation agency of a big Entrepreneurs’ Association, SAE EPE (EL) a major Entrepreneurs’ Association and LCC (PL), the Lodz Chamber of Commerce. The project created the following intellectual outputs:IO 1 . The Innovation Management System Guidebook for SMEs including contents regarding Creativity and Innovation thinking, Collaboration contents and a Health check for creativity and collaboration in SMEs.IO 2 . Training programme for Innovation Management in SMEs including training curriculum and materials developed on the issues of collaboration management and creativity management.IO 3. Online platform for SMEs innovation, including the collaboration board game, the Innovation thinking decision tree tool and innovation management mini games. All project outputs are available online. They were developed in 7 languages. The project started in Oct 2018 and ran for 2 years. Partners have committed themselves to sustain project results for a minimum of 5 years after the project closure. Further to producing intellectual outputs, partners deployed project management, quality assurance, dissemination and exploitation activities to generate long lasting results.The target groups of the project were:- SMEs of all sizes- Professional trainers and training institutes advancing/aspiring to train and develop innovation management competences, and IMS process to the assigned persons of the companies who will be responsible for innovation management within the company.