Remove the fire blanket

In more rural parts of our country, innovation and development is less oriented around larger and dominant players. As a result, it’s less visible to the larger public, including policymakers. Rural economies are largely based on SMEs, which jump as high as their pole allows them. At the same time, technology-driven SMEs in particular are often hidden gems, trying to find their way in a global economy and dealing with the same challenges as multinationals, such as attracting good and skilled staff.

While paying lip service to SMEs, European, national as well as regional governments come up with large sets of programs. These large innovation funds, such as the recently launched national Nxtgen Hightech, are more suited for organizations with fully equipped R&D and public-private collaboration departments.