North West Europe Programme - TESLA Project - January 2012
A consortium involving LÍONRA and led by the BMW Regional Assembly has received conditional approval for the TESLA Project under the EU's Interreg IVB Programme. Negotiations on the conditions attaching to the award of funding will commence in early February. It is expected that the project will commence in April, 2012.
The aim of the project is through transnational cooperation, to design and deliver a suite of tools for the successful development of knowledge intensive firms with high potential to export and through collaborative analysis and pilot actions, to enhance the partners’ regional innovation ecosystems to support such firms, including SMEs and Micro Enterprises, to secure export markets. In terms of European innovation, the NW European Zone is the principal engine of innovation growth, it is the centre of European prosperity and ultimately European economic potential. It is therefore critical that Regions within the NW E Area work closely together to ensure that best practices are jointly developed, transferred and applied and to ensure that supports for knowledge intensive firms are the most efficient and effective.
The Europe 2020 Flagship Initiative Innovation Union recognises the importance of developing successful European Companies that can compete within the global marketplace.EU policy makers recognise that regions and cities are the basic spatial areas where innovation is fostered through the exchange of knowledge and the building of innovation ecosystems which support the growth of enterprises. These innovation ecosystems are mainly provided by the interactions of public sector agencies and research institutions. The effectiveness of these supports will be a key factor in achieving European growth targets. Regions & cities also represent opportunities for reciprocal supports for such firms, which, within a short time frame, need to develop export markets, within the EU and into third countries.
We aim to develop and deliver a range of highly focussed and relevant supports targeted specifically at the technology, capabilities, finance and export requirements of such companies, thus ensuring that best practices are shared and new interventions are developed in the partner regions. Our cooperation is clearly focused on developing a suite of supports for Knowledge Intensive Industries, with export potential. All of the partners possess extensive expertise in supporting innovation and productivity growth within their own regions. Partners in TESLA, who come from a range of central and remote regions are conscious of the challenges which currently face entrepreneurs in terms of successfully developing technology-based exportable products and services for subsequent trading within the global marketplace. All partners, who have direct engagement with potential high growth knowledge-intensive Industries, have a varied range of supports to offer within their Regional Innovation ecosystems. We have identified the development of high potential knowledge-intensive industries as a strategic priority and the need for focused supports to address the technology, finance, capability and internationalisation needs of such enterprises. Within the framework of TESLA, partners have identified a range of supports which can be collaboratively piloted and developed through transnational cooperation. Our primary focus is to design, pilot and assess new supports that can assist knowledge-intensive firms to grow, enter export markets and generate high value employment. These initiatives include supports for the development of both the capabilities of the entrepreneur and product technologies, development of product portfolios, together with areas of financing and procurements on an international basis, internationalisation and export development.
