News & Activities

Regional Seminars and Conferences

Published: 2021-03-30

In Spring 2021, all eight micro project of SEMPRE Accelerators hosted a local conference to showcase their results and discuss what they learned from 1.5 years of micro project implementation - especially with regard to their local support ecosystems.

Among the findings of the workshops which also found entry into the "Recommendations for an Inclusive Entrepreneurship Ecosystem" are the following:

Support ecosystems need to cater to the specific needs of sparsely populated rural regions. In Sweden, for example, many support offers are available in the coastal region, while they do not reach the inner part of the country. Also, many municipalities are small and don’t have the possibilities to build support structures on a municipal level.
As the workshop in Germany revealed, a major disadvantage is that regional ecosystems there usually lack a connection between social work on the one side and funding for innovation on the other. Innovation funding is mostly targeted at actors who already possess resources, while it does not take the specific needs of disadvantaged groups into account.
Strengthen awareness and understanding for the business models of social enterprises among economic and administrative stakeholders (There is a need for actors to better understand the different business model. For example, the way SIVANS organised their business turned into a problem when it was considered too much of a company to have right to unemployment compensation, but too little of a company to get support to start a business).
Next to informal support, fixing agreements with other actors (such as Ministries, the Unemployment Fund etc.) in written in order to increase commitment is one of the success factors discussed at the workshop hosted in Estonia.

All workshops were documented in short reports: