NOCCA created novel opportunities for new company creation and accelerated growth

marika.bogel-leino — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 07:15:58 +0000

Aim of the project was to build and pilot a new cross-border approach to student empowered company creation with the specific aim of generating new cross-border enterprises in the silver, blue and green economies in the Central Baltic Sea region. The main objective was to create 6 new joint or cooperating cross-border companies.

Project organised hackathons, networking and pitching events to support students’ awareness raising and capacity building for entrepreneurial-minded students. 450 students participated in different events and many of them indicated future aspiration towards entrepreneurship career.

Project faced challenges from Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns had a negative impact on project activities, especially on cross-border cooperation. Project was quite successful in using online tools but students’ commitment to virtual events was not as strong as to physical events. Missing possibility to communicate face-to-face made cooperation harder. Because of that some of the project focus was turned to helping existing startups by giving mentoring services to them. In total 72 enterprises were supported by the project activities.

Project main objective was achieved partly: 7 new start-up companies were created. However, they are not cross-border companies although they indicated plans to expand their activities to other project countries. Intention to work together with somebody from other country was not enough strong and Covid related restrictions had additional negative impact on working across borders.

Tags:

SME and entrepreneurship

Knowledge and technology transfer

Category:

Joint student company

At a glance text:

In total 72 enterprises were supported by the project activities.
7 new start-up companies were created.

Project link:

NOCCA – Novel opportunities for new company creation and accelerated growth

Springboard established 14 co-operating and four joint companies

marika.bogel-leino — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 06:55:08 +0000

Springboard met and exceeded its result indicators. Great cross-border business teams were established and cooperative and joint companies were registered. The jointly designed and implemented cross-border cooperation model worked well and formed a sustainable formula for future start-up development. In total, 14 co-operating and four joint companies were established.

Cross-border cooperation was used to learn about the capabilities and strengths of the partnering areas as well as the local needs. Project activities were implemented in parallel in all participating countries, using interactivity and streaming where possible. Kick-off events and demo days as well as business -to-business matchmaking were organized in cooperation between the partners to foster the cooperation between start-up teams and participants from all countries.

Springboard accelerator programmes were arranged in parallel in all three participating cities Turku, Tallinn and Riga to bring interactivity to the programmes. Each acceleration programme started with joint kick-off event followed by ten weeks of training programme. After that, the teams from each country came together for Demo Day and pitching competition to show their progress.
In addition, cross-border mentoring was put into practice during the accelerator program by producing an electronic mentor pool and giving the mentors possibilities to travel and meet the teams cross-border. Business-to-business matchmaking events were arranged in all participating cities and International mentors had coaching meetings with the accelerator teams. Each of 81 participating teams was offered several mentoring meetings to support developing their idea and starting the company.

The project helped to internationalise the learning process and accelerate active communication between the team members. For reinforcing the transition of business ideas to viable start-ups, the universities and business development organisations worked closely together to foster cross-border cooperation in the early stage of business development.
Based on the experience from the successful acceleration programme, a Startup Manual was published to provide information for starting businesses.