SME and entrepreneurship

The project CB2East - Central Baltic Cleantech Clusters expanding to East of EU markets - generated Latvian and Finnish meta-cluster platforms, where complementary competences have leveraged partner’s capacities to enter new market and support SMEs internationalization strategies. More specifically, Baltic Cleantech Alliance provided functional collaboration aimed to increase export in Central-Asia; whereas in North-West Russia were developed collaboration models with local clusters to support the same targets.

The project Archipelago - strategic partnerships for business development inspired entrepreneurs in the archipelago and rural areas to develop through partnerships and training in Finland (including Aland Islands) and Sweden. The archipelago regions have certain challenges: small scale communities, depopulation, aging generation, strong seasonality, lower accessibility, etc.

The main achievement of project CLUSME is broad contact network and strong metacluster between enterprises and organisations from participating countries and target markets. Entreprises involved in project activities have started export activities in 3 new markets: Georgia, Uzbekistan and Republic of South Africa.
Thanks to this project preconditions to beneficiaries (SMEs) from mechanical engineering and mechatronics sectors were created. 

By encouraging young people in the archipelago, developing and training their entrepreneurial skills and giving them a positive attitude towards entrepreneurship, you strengthen the region in a long-term perspective. You show them different ways to make a living.
 
The RIBS project involved more than 1000 young people in the ages of 12-18 years in sparely populated archipelago areas in Finland, Sweden, Estonia and Åland.