Presentation of the results and the final deliverable Design Options Paper (DOP) of SmartFI project
The “Smart methods to improve the performance of financial instruments for SMEs”– SmartFI project aims to help the partners overcome a common challenge: to increase the satisfaction of the SMEs participating in financial instruments and the number of the participating SMEs.
For this reason, the project used the experience and the skills of three partners (Business and Cultural Development Centre – KEPA from Greece, Regional Development Agency in Bielsko-Biala – ARSSA from Poland, National Innovation Agency – ANI from Portugal) to identify how User Centered design tools and processes can be used by innovation agencies, in order to design and provide user friendly financial instruments to SMEs.
During the 18-months implementation of the project (from October 2019 to March 2021), the partners followed a combination of Twinning+ Methodology and Design Thinking Methodology. More specifically, 2 peer learning workshops were organised, 9 good practices/case studies were assessed and a process of improving an existing or designing a new financial instrument that is user-friendly was developed and tested in all 3 partner regions, addressing a specific selected challenge related to financial instruments.
The result of this whole effort is documented in the Design Options Paper (DOP), which serves as a “guide” or a “handbook” to other organizations that design and/ or implement financial instruments for SMEs.
The project’s results and the DOP were presented at the online final event that was held on 09.03.2021.
The final version of DOP is being published and becomes available to anyone interested, with the present article.
The final deliverable of SmartFI project can be found here: Design Options Paper
More information about SmartFI project can be found here.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870580.