Since the beginning of the project GoSmart BSR, seven innovation brokers in different Baltic Sea Region countries within the Transnational innovation brokerage system (TIBS) provide support to entrepreneurs to help strengthening their innovation capacity and establishing international cooperation. Each broker has a different experience to share while working with various businesses.
Increased interest of companies to start their internationalization activities after the summer break can be observed now, says a representative of Lithuanian Innovation Centre, Tautvydas Pipiras. “We are helping companies to start new innovative partnerships across the region. More specifically, we want to be aligned to the EU agenda and green deal, thus we are putting special attention to the SMEs who are willing or wanting to implement or create circular economy solutions. Together with external experts, we are preparing a study about Lithuanian manufacturing companies’ preparedness to integrate circular economy solutions and their readiness to integrate into international value chains with these solutions. We have a list of companies that are ready for internationalization in this field, thus we will focus on helping those companies to initiate new international partnerships on the circular economy,” he explains.
An innovation broker from Latvia, Ilona Platonova, shares her recent conclusion that many entrepreneurs want to start or have already tried to start selling their products, for example, in the German market. They are looking for a business partner who would like to distribute their products in another market and make money with it. “But it is necessary to explain, that the German market is very saturated and wholesale prices for various products are quite low, so this may be the goal, but it is certainly not easy to do. It is easier to use customer-service platforms, where the commissions for product placement and transactions will be lower than the costs for an intermediary in the German market. This is especially relevant for companies with a small number of manufactured/sold products, which also sell their products directly to the buyer in Latvia,” explains Platonova.
Innovation brokers continue to work and are looking for new opportunities for cross-border cooperation. It is still possible to contact brokers and find a solution for the development of innovation. Find more information and contacts: gosmartbsr.eu/tibs
You can read more about the entrepreneurs’ experience working with innovation broker in Latvia: https://gosmartbsr.eu/feedback-from-the-entrepreneur-tibs-user-in-latvia/
Get to know each of the innovation brokers in the video prepared by the partners >>
