European Business & Innovation Centre Network
The European Business & Innovation Centre Network (EBN) is the leading, non-profit, pan- European, association of incubator units and business support structures. EBN is a network of over 150 quality certified Business and Innovation Centres (BICs), and has in excess of 100 associate members which support the development and growth of innovative entrepreneurs, start-ups, and SMEs.
Organisation
EBN was created in 1984 by the European Commission (EC), and European industry leaders, with the aim of stimulating the growth of new enterprises by providing technical support to innovative start-ups, spin-offs, SMEs, and entrepreneurs. EBN encourages an innovative spirit through its unique ‘EBN Quality System’ to award and manage the European Commission-owned label “EC-BIC”, a recognised certification of quality for business support structures. EBN offers members a full range of services including: certification, networking, training, representation, events, and access to projects.
As a specialist in business support and as an innovation and technology transfer expert, EBN brings in expertise on the planning, development and operation of the project. EBN also brings experience through the network, and previous projects in the definition and deployment of training programmes, policy formation and pan-european communication and dissemination.
EBN contributes to the project through its main core competence:
1) Operating as an open and innovative platform, EBN encourages an entrepreneurship and innovation culture in accordance with the Europe 2020 Innovation Agenda
In detail, EBN, based on its capacity, is going to contribute in the following tasks:
1) In WP3, in training for technology managers, in boosting clusters in EaP and in promoting the ETPs concept in EaP.
2) In WP4, in policy development framework, in increasing the coordination and synergies between policies and programmes of EU/MS and EaP.
3) In WP5, in communication, dissemination, outreach and exploitation including the coordination of communication, the dissemination & outreach activities, the dissemination material and technical implementation, the content management and the communities of practice and the final dissemination conference which will be organized by EBN in Brussels.