Novel opportunities for new company creation and accelerated growth

Programme 2014 - 2020 INTERREG V-A Finland - Estonia - Latvia - Sweden (Central Baltic)

Date of latest update: 2024-03-26

Description

Description (EN):

Students are a key stakeholder group in the creation of new knowledge intensive companies. Aside from those already having established their own start-up, most have little exposure to entrepreneurship and thus have limited willingness and capacities to create and run their own company. To set up a successful company requires awareness of business opportunities in new and emergent fields. At the same time, newly established start-ups need accelerated growth to succeed. Accelerated international growth is difficult for start-ups since they lack networks, contacts, resources and skills. With NOCCA – Novel Opportinities for new Company Creation and Accelerated growth – a new innovation curriculum will be jointly developed and implemented in Helsinki, Tallinn and Riga comprising of three consecutive multidisciplinary and intergenerational hackathons and idea camps that mix students from the participating countries and organizations with the purpose of creating new cross-border companies and further engaging the innovation ecosystem further. Thanks to the project: 850 students are exposed to entrepreneurship and challenges in the silver, green and blue economies; 6 new cross-border companies with global potential will be created; 15 existing early stage startups are supported within the program; 6 joint demodays for ecosystem partners are organised during the program; 6 joint hackathon challenges are cocreated with ecosystem partners; Concrete roadmap with responsibilities and annual schedules for ecosystem engagement is created. NOCCA is co-developed by Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, Foundation Tallinna Teaduspark Tehnopol, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, and Mektory. The project will be run from 1.4.2019-30.6.2021 with an overall cost of 1.184.796 EUR.

Achievements (EN):

NOCCA created novel opportunities for new company creation and accelerated growth. Aim of the project was to build and pilot a new cross-border approach to student empowered company creation with the specific aim of generating new cross-border enterprises in the silver, blue and green economies in the Central Baltic Sea region. The main objective was to create 6 new joint or cooperating cross-border companies. Project organised hackathons, networking and pitching events to support students’ awareness raising and capacity building for entrepreneurial-minded students. 450 students participated in different events and many of them indicated future aspiration towards entrepreneurship career. Project faced challenges from Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns had a negative impact on project activities, especially on cross-border cooperation. Project was quite successful in using online tools but students’ commitment to virtual events was not as strong as to physical events. Missing possibility to communicate face-to-face made cooperation harder. Because of that some of the project focus was turned to helping existing startups by giving mentoring services to them. In total 72 enterprises were supported by the project activities. Project main objective was achieved partly: 7 new start-up companies were created. However, they are not cross-border companies although they indicated plans to expand their activities to other project countries. Intention to work together with somebody from other country was not enough strong and Covid related restrictions had additional negative impact on working across borders.

Website: http://centralbaltic.eu/

Expected Results (EN): R1.1. Number of new joint or co-operating knowledge intensive enterprises

Expected Outputs (EN):

The project's main result is six new joint or cooperating cross-border companies. The project approaches this results through different work packages and tasks leading to outputs. The project outputs have been thought through much in the way of a sales funnel as an analogy leading to main result. During the course of the project, we aim to support 15 new enterprises, of which at least 6 would be cross-border companies. With some of the teams project is working already before establishment of the company. In addition, project will support 15 other companies as we are identifying ecosystem actors and strengthening the cooperation of different stakeholder groups within the region. In order to achieve 6 cross-border companies NOCCA will expose students to possibilities of entrepreneurship. The more students are exposed to the idea of entrepreneurship, innovation and ideation, the more quality ideas and "wantrepreneurs" we will have. Each country will have their own hackathons; each joined by between 50-200 students and ran twice during the duration of the project. This amounts to a whopping 600-800 students being exposed to the challenges! The workshops develop the ideas a step further and already create commitment to the idea and project. We are also involving existing startups or startup teams in the project in order to match people and skills as well as knowledge and resources from different countries in the region. In the final bootcamp a jury will select the best 2-5 ideas (per each of the two implementations) for funding and for receiving support from the relevant incubators. Out of these, the end result companies will be formed. The ecosystem partners will take part in designing the hackathon themes; altogether, this comes up to 12-24 co-created hackathon themes. At the end of each implementation there will be a joint demo day with the ecosystem partners in each country showcasing the results.

Thematic information

SME and entrepreneurship Knowledge and technology transfer

Specific Objective: New Central Baltic knowledge intensive companies

Thematic Objective: (03) enhancing the competitiveness of SMEs by:

Investment Priority: (03a) promoting entrepreneurship, in particular by facilitating the economic exploitation of new ideas and fostering the creation of new firms, including through business incubators

Partners (4)

Lead Partner: Haaga-Helia ammattikorkeakoulu Oy

Address: Ratapihantie 13, FI-00520 Helsinki, Finland

Legal status: public

Website: https://www.haaga-helia.fi/en/frontpage

Total budget: EUR 527 965.81

ERDF budget: EUR 392 014.61

Mektory

Name: Mektory

Department: Start-up Hub

Address: Raja 15, 12618 Tallinn, Estonia

Legal status: public

Website: http://Mektory.ee

Total budget: EUR 148 102.48

ERDF budget: EUR 124 672.67

Stockholm School of Economics in Riga

Name: Stockholm School of Economics in Riga

Department: Business and Management

Address: Strelnieku 4A, LV1010 Riga, Latvia

Legal status: private

Website: http://www.sseriga.edu

Total budget: EUR 224 830.98

ERDF budget: EUR 188 925.47

Sihtasutus Tallinna Teaduspark Tehnopol

Name: Sihtasutus Tallinna Teaduspark Tehnopol

Department: Startup Incubator

Address: Teaduspargi 6/1, 12618 Tallinn, Estonia

Legal status: private

Website: http://www.tehnopol.ee

Total budget: EUR 152 909.68

ERDF budget: EUR 128 719.37

Partners map

Lead partner

Project partner

Summary

Project name (EN): Novel opportunities for new company creation and accelerated growth

Project acronym: NOCCA

Project start date: 2019-04-01

Project end date: 2021-06-30

Project status: closed

Total budget/expenditure: EUR 1 053 808.95

Total EU funding (amount): EUR 834 332.12

Co-financing sources:

ERDF: Amount, EUR 834 332.12.

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

Financing programme

2014 - 2020 INTERREG V-A Finland - Estonia - Latvia - Sweden (Central Baltic)

Last month that data in keep.eu was retrieved from the Programme's website or received from the Programme

2023-11-11

No. of projects in keep.eu / Total no. of projects (% of projects in keep.eu)

137 / 137 (100%)

No. of project partnerships in keep.eu / Total no. of project partnerships (% of project partnerships in keep.eu)

663 / 663 (100%)

Notes on the data

Information provided by the Programme. Achievements were retrieved by Interact from the Programme website (http://centralbaltic.eu/), or a website directly linked from it, on 2021-11-08, 2023-01-12 and 2024-03-08.

The financial data featured in keep.eu for this programme, it's projects and its partners is not exact and should be taken as a reference only.

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