Springboard exceeded its goals
The Central Baltic Springboard joint project with Riga, Tallinn and Turku is coming to an end. During the last two years there has been cross-border mentoring, meetings, and exchanging of ideas to give dozens of start-ups a new platform for accelerating their growth. The results indicate that the goals set were achieved.
The Central Baltic Springboard project started in late 2015. The consortium included a university and a developer organisation from the cities of Turku, Tallinn and Riga, six partners in total. The partners from Latvia were Riga Technical University and Latvia Technology Park.
The Springboard programme supported the creation of new start-ups in Tallinn, Riga and Turku, as well as cross-border co-operation between them. Three 10-week acceleration programmes were held within the Springboard framework, supporting the teams and providing counselling in the further development of their ideas.
In the project participated 81 teams with 179 team members from three cities. Project supported the creation of a total of 18 registered cross-border co-operative companies, four of which were joint companies. These numbers show that project succeeded in increasing the cross-border collaboration of start-ups and business development organisations in Turku, Tallinn and Riga.
Global thinking, international networking and encouragement for developing a business to make it internationally successful were the main success factors of the project, this support is particularly important, hence the contribution from the EU’s Central Baltic Programme has contributed to the development and growth of the start-ups of all three project countries.
FACTS AND FIGURES:
– Project started in November 2015
– Three joint accelerator programmes in Riga, Tallinn and Turku with a total of
- 81 start-up teams/companies (goal 45–90)
- 179 team members (goal 150)
- 18 registered co-operative companies (goal 15)
- of which 4 joint companies (goal 2–4)
– Funded by the Central Baltic Programme 2014–2020
– Partners
- Turku: University of Turku and Turku Science Park Ltd
- Tallinn: Tallinn University of Technology and Tallinn Science Park Tehnopol
- Riga: Riga Technical University and Latvia Technology Park
FURTHER INFORMATION:
Laila Elina, Latvia Technology Park, laila.elina@rtu.lv, +371 26532002
Central Baltic Startup Springboard
Central Baltic region has a great opportunity to strengthen its position as a globally competitive center of knowledge-intensive, born global startups aiming for rapid growth. The potential leans on high quality university education, wide selection of entrepreneurship studies and a network of support organisations. However, the international startup scene has become more competitive, thus creating a need to strengthen the regional approach through joint teams and processes. A cross-border business acceleration process is needed to be able to offer comparable value to compete with currently stronger startup regions. The Springboard project supports the development of new joint and cooperative knowledge-intensive startups springing up of the shared smart specialization strengths of the participating regions (ICT, cleantech, healthtech and biotech).
The project consortium consists of 6 partners covering three Central Baltic countries. Partners from Turku, Tallinn and Riga implement three joint 10-week business acceleration programs, coaching for the most potential teams and targeted matchmaking activities for already established early-stage companies. By combining expertise across borders, it is easier to find potential business ideas, establish globally competitive joint teams with versatile know-how and experience, and find a group of potential “CB startup stars” to coach towards success.
- Project duration: 01.11.2015. until 31.01.2018.
- Lead Partner: Turku Science Park.
- Project partners: University of Turku, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn Science Park TECHNOPOLIS, Latvia Technology Park, Riga Technical University.
- Project total amount: 1 338 502 EUR, LTP part: 156 110,48 EUR.
It is financed by the European Regional Development Fund.
