Creation of Support Ecosystem for Innovative Fast Growing Companies

Maja Tomanic Vidovic

Creation of support network for SMEs, including start - ups and scale - ups »SUPPORT NETWORK FOR 3S« with partner institutions can be a useful model and tool to faciliate inovative entreprenurial spirit in different economic environments.

The initiative stems from the European Commission's needs and guidelines to strengthen partnerships between "policymakers" and other national financial promotional institutions to support entrepreneurship, as countries from individual geographically and strategically linked European regions need to connect in finding synergy effects in supporting SMEs, start up ecosystems and support innovation systems for fast-growing companies.

Slovene Enterprise Fund (SEF) is a public financial fund and a national promotional financial intermediary, which offers favourable financial incentives for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), start-up and scale ups - hight tech fast growing innovative companies (3S) in Slovenia to help them develop and grow. SEF offers a wide range of financial incentives for each development phase in the life cycle of the company, such as grants for startups, seed capital, venture capital, microcredits and guarantees for bank loans.

SEF also presents a strong element in Support network for 3S in Slovenia and has created a successful partnerships with other partners such as policy makers, financial partners, support organisations and services and research and education organizations.

But for the future success of different EU regions it is crucial to create a support network not only on the national level but also a support network on the inter - regional level. This kind of network should represent the cooperation and partnership among the partner support institutions and this partnership should also influence the cooperation among companies (3S - SMEs, startups and scaleups) from the connected region.

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