While the pandemic has spotlighted the general lack of flexibility and readiness of the entrepreneurial ecosystem to react fast, it also increased the openness to innovation and cross-sectoral collaborations and the opportunity to improve innovation processes and culture inside companies. In this context, IDEA project proposes a new solution to tackle the opportunity created, by providing new tools and development paths to support companies to develop new solutions through ideation processes. The process is to be further enhanced by a close collaboration between traditional and creative SMEs and startups as a way to increase the quality of the ideas for innovation developed and to reduce the existing gap between companies from these sectors. By joining SMEs, startups and the creative industry all will benefit from multitude of visions and approaches and cross-sectoral collaborations that will unlock new sustainability opportunities for all. Thus, the project has developed a new tool to support innovation, creativity and collaborations as a means to growth, sustainability and resilience under unexpected situations. Under IDEA project, gathering 5 organizations from 4 different countries, 3 intellectual outputs will be developed. With the IDEA project, the partnership aims to deliver a solution to support SMEs to become more innovative and be more prepared to face the challenges and obstacles of unexpected and risky global situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.
The project aims to develop a new tool to support innovation, creativity and collaborations as a mean to growth, sustainability and resilience under unexpected situations. And the main objective of the project, therefore, is the development of an easy to use and accessible integrated toolset to support businesses to implement ideation techniques to support innovation, complemented by critical for SMEs engagement in ideation activities - methodology for innovation awareness and engagement and support for creativity and collaboration.
In vast majority of SMEs the responsibility for generating ideas and starting the innovation process is controlled by top management creating a barrier in the process. Innovation is established for many years as a key to growth, sustainability and competitiveness of companies. But the COVID-19 pandemic situation has highlighted even more its importance. The unexpected unprecedented situation has challenged all companies and professionals to outstretch their resilience and innovation skills to survive, and some firms shown their ability to become creative and innovate, adjusting processes and relocating resources to deliver new products highly responsive to new conditions. The pandemic has increased the openness to innovation but the process is to be further enhanced by a close collaboration between traditional and creative SMEs and startups as a way to increase the quality of the ideas for innovation developed. By joining SMEs, startups and creative industry all will benefit from multitude of visions and approaches and cross sectoral collaborations that will unlock new sustainability opportunities for all.