Employment-oriented innovation

Description

The outcome of the project was:

• Selected public and private institutions are empowered to promote employment-oriented innovation in growth-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The project targets the demand side of the labour market. It therefore fostered the creation of new and better jobs for women and men. The project supported the development of a services marketplace at a local institution with regional branches, which provided SMEs with central access to business-oriented solutions. The target groups of the project were not only information and service providers, MSMEs and start-up companies (direct target groups) but also job seekers, young adults in transition from school to the labour market and employees of MSME (indirect target groups.)

The project outputs were: 

• Institutional support services for growth-oriented start-ups were improved, taking into consideration the needs of female-led start-ups
• Information about and employment orientation of industrial and business development services for innovative and growth-oriented MSME was increased. 

Services

Output process 1

Support an existing institution to provide comprehensive information for MSME and start-up companies on where they can obtain services, etc., the following activities were carried out:

• Selection of the institution to provide comprehensive information for MSME and start-up companies
• Technical and organizational development of an organization (IMC) for providing comprehensive information on business development services; an institutional capacity assessment (ICA) is carried out after selection
  • Development of business plan
  • Capacity development: Human capacity development, Organizational development, Network/cooperation development. 
  • Marketing
• Technical advice to IMC on CSR activities regarding job quality of women
• Processing of information on support services for innovative start-ups and providing this information by partner organizations

Output process 2

Strengthen public and private service providers to improve the quality of their services, the following activities were carried out:

• Clients’ needs analysis and definition of quality criteria
• Mapping and assessment of service providers
• Product adaptation and market testing
• Training of staff of business providers, consultants and trainers
  • Training of staff of business innovation centers (incl. private sector, government agencies) on entrepreneurship skills and other new services
  • Training of staff of support structures for MSME (e.g. incubators, government agencies, BDS providers) for awareness of special support needs for female entrepreneurs
  • Training of selected service providers on how to increase the quality of their services, including on resource efficiency
  • Training of further 130 consultants for BDS, incl. resource efficiency services
  • Training of trainers on WAFFAR and others
• Facilitating cooperation and networking