Poznan Science and Technology Park is the lead partner in the ESSPO (Efficient Support Services Portfolio for SME’s) project, part of the Interreg Europe programme. We are the only Polish institution in the role of a lead partner from among the 64 projects approved for funding.

Interreg Europe
Interreg Europe helps regional and local governments across Europe to develop and deliver better policy by exchanging experience and knowledge. Projects developed with financial support from the Interreg Europe programme help to implement better solutions in four categories: research and innovation, SME competitiveness, low-carbon economy as well as environment and resource efficiency.

ESSPO, or the cooperation for SME
The project addresses the issue of insufficient impact and efficiency of policies aiming at enhancing SMEs competitiveness, especially their growth on national and international markets as well as their engagement in innovation processes. The project will work on aligning support services into efficient portfolios designed as policy mixes, finding synergies among different services and targeting specific support at appropriate segments of SME population.

Why ESSPO?
The project will work on the solutions to align the support services into efficient portfolios such as:

• development of new support services tailored to SMEs needs
• diagnostic tools to assess company absorption capacity and management tools to provide comprehensive support tailored to SMEs needs;
• a combination of different kinds of support (financial, advisory, access to infrastructure etc.)
• more efficient support coordination provided by different institutions
• improving good quality support;
• improving programme management practices (calls for proposals, project and contact with beneficiaries, monitoring and evaluating the results).

The implementation of the project will start on April 1st, 2016.

Our role in the project
PSTP, as the only Polish institution, is a lead partner in one of the Interreg Europe projects. The Lead partner is responsible for the coordination of all partners’ actions and implementation of project goals in our region. Partner institutions taking part in the ESSPO project come from Belgium, France, Spain, Bulgaria, Estonia and Germany.