| Who will use i³? / Target Market |
Business Innovation Centre (EC-BIC) personnel
There are 160 official EC Business Innovation Centres (EC-BICs) in 22 European countries. EC-BICs are support organisations for innovative small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) and entrepreneurs. They are recognises by the European Commission through a quality certification scheme. They are instruments of regional economic development whose mandate is to support the creation of new generations of innovative firms and to help existing firms to modernise and innovative.
The European BIC Network (EBN), established in 1984 by the EC, is the official representative body of the EC BICs. In addition to the 160 full EC BIC members, EBN also has approximately 100 associate members. These organisations, from both the private and public sector include leading corporate players in industry sectors related to BIC activities (BT, Gaz de France, Procter & Gamble etc) and incubator development bodies in other areas (North American Business Incubator Association (NBIA), UKBI, etc) .
EBN has a mandate to provide four main categories of service to their members:
1. Networking and representation
2. Technical assistance in BIC start-up and development & quality
management
3. Project engineering and management
4. Information, training & communication
EBN is supporting the i³? project for two main reasons:
| • | Synergy with existing activities e.g. development of training resources for EC BICs. |
| • | Added value this project will provide to EC BICs i.e. unique training resource focusing on high-growth SMEs |
At the end of the project, as a project partner, EBN will have the right to distribute the final i³ training resources to EBN members.
Incubator Managers and personnel
According to the recent DG Enterprise report “Benchmarking
of Business Incubators”, there are almost 900 business
incubators in Europe. There are many different types
of business incubators from low tech industrial estates
to high tech technology centres:
These business incubators are widely spread across Europe with a particularly high concentration in Germany, France, Belgium and the UK.
The services provided by these business incubators varies considerably in nature. The “Benchmarking of Business Incubators” report highlights the fact that “the value added by business incubators lies increasingly in the type and quality of business support services provided to clients”.
The i³ resource will be of most relevance and value to incubators whose mandate includes providing support for high potential start-ups and high growth SMEs. A definition of High Potential Start-Ups provided by Enterprise Ireland, the national development agency of Ireland is as follow:
| • | “above 10 employees |
| • | internationally oriented |
| • | turnover increasing by … per annum” |
Business support intermediaries/advisors
The i³ tool will also be relevant and useful for other types of business support organisations and advisors whose mandate includes providing support for high potential start-ups and high growth SMEs. Such organisations may include Business Links (UK), regional development bodies, entrepreneurial support structures in universities and large corporate (intrapreneurship).
High growth SMEs
The end
user and beneficiary of the i³ training resource
will be high growth SMEs. For a list of business support
organisations providing the i³ service near you,
please contact ebn@ebn.be.
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