It is urgent to exercise your influence for the benefit of a carefully selected European SME. Our common goal? Increase its confidence in its innate capacities and its attractiveness to entrepreneurs and decision makers from all European countries.
More than ever, you represent the “antidote” to the harsh economic reality our region has faced for some time. And the benefits you confer are very real – they’re not just words! Large and intermediate-sized enterprises – maybe like yours – tend to be more protected from fluctuations in the economy and the job losses that may occur as a result. By “mentoring” a small- and medium-size enterprise through the “Refer an SME®!” program, you are shining a spotlight on a business you know and you recognize the potential. Help us to help it!
Why now? It's a question of survival!In both the public and private sectors, supply base downsizing has become the rule due to shrinking budgets and an increasingly competitive marketplace. The survival and the development of our small- and medium-size enterprises require fresh, efficient, fast and economical initiatives.
By promoting both the potential of SMEs and collaborative innovation (1) to European entrepreneurs and decision makers, the “Refer an SME!” initiative provides a pragmatic answer for countering the detrimental effects of the current economic crisis.
(1) collaborative innovation is the fact for a company to participate into innovative projects with other players of its ecosystem (clients, suppliers, partners), this participation being not limited to a financial contribution.
The program“Refer an SME!” represents an unprecedented initiative that we ambition to deploy into the 31 European countries of the EEA plus Switzerland, with the primary objective to underscore the importance of SMEs in our economy and assist them as they try to emerge from the repetitive economic downturns that impact our countries.
Your participation in this program is individual and your contact details will only be disclosed to the participating SMEs. But you may also want to spontaneously share our initiative to other enterprise leaders who could refer a European SME as well.
Revealing the invisible: the intangible assets that really countWhile the link between innovation and economic growth has been demonstrated for a long time (innovative organisations grow faster, export more and are less exposed to economic crises - Robert M. Solow, 1957, Paul M. Romer, 2002, Robert E. Lucas, 1995 - Nobel Prizes in Economic Sciences), while innovation can only be collaborative, because a large part of an enterprise value relies outside its boundaries, very few SMEs know how to reveal and value essential intanglible assets such as their capacity for collaborative innovation.
The “Refer an SME!” program is designed to highlight such hidden assets. Thanks to an in-depth organisational assessment based on a first-of-its-kind methodology, we are able to “sequence” the collaborative innovation DNA of any company. The detailed insights, diagnosis conclusions and recommendations provided to each participating SME can then be used to build a personnalised improvement plan, as well as to promote the SME potential on its market.
The program goes beyond the traditional criteria used for assessing the potential of a company (finance, economics), focusing on “hidden assets” that are not often addressed, but are so essential for revealing the very DNA of a company. Our process helps SMEs projecting toward the future rather than relying on the past as a guide.
As a key player in the value chain, step forward and be an example to the other European entrepreneurs and decision makersFertilize the ground of your future and provide a helping hand to an SME!