„I3SME – Introduction Innovation Inside SMEs” project financed by the Central Europe Program of the EU. There are 9 partner organisations from Italy, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. Local development agencies, business associations, universities and research and technological transfer centres and relevant public authorities will be directly involved in the project and will benefit from the envisaged activities. They need support in the identification of instruments and strategies to apply innovation inside SMEs and provide an capabilities transfer at international level in order to ensure the efficiency an added value.

One of the hungarian partners is the South Transdanubian Regional Development Agency, and as a subcontractor the South Transdanubian Regional Innovation Agency are responsable for the professional activities. STRIA will be able to realize and utilize some of the daily routines and difficulties of the SMEs from a different perspective in the region, which knowledge can be built in the RIS as well.
I3SME aims at contributing to the micro and SMEs performances enhancement in the research and innovation fields, offering effective services in order to enable them to face the main difficulties in acceding to knowledge and innovation. It is envisaged the direct involvement of 800 SMEs and the training of 30 facilitators which will be able to support the enterprises in the acquisition of innovation.

The specific objectives are:

• Analyse the different approaches and services already utilised in the involved areas individuating good practices and excellence, considering also the differences in terms of economic and territorial features, entrepreneurial and business activities.
• Defining common methodologies to be applied introducing the benchmarking approach and ICT platform as tools for assessing and improving the micro and SMEs performances.
• Implementing pilot projects in order to test the new services and assess their effectiveness.
• Conceiving specific action plans/guidelines to be adopted by SMEs in the involved areas with the participation of the relevant stakeholders.
• Training and supporting community of facilitators, advisors who have the task of supporting SMEs in self-analysis, learning, creation and transfer of knowledge processes.