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Connecting business potentials over the borders (Going abroad)
Start date: May 31, 2011, End date: Apr 29, 2014 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The Single Market for goods and services is one of the main drivers of Europe's economy. It relies largely on the opportunities available for businesses to increase their markets over borders through export and to form networks and joint businesses that are competitive internationally.The world entered a severe financial crisis in 2008. Now, in parts of Europe the economic growth rate is increasing, Sweden, Germany and Poland are going strong and Lithuania has passed their crisis and the growth rate is increasing. To secure this development an important task in the SB Area is to promote growth in SME’s and especially in micro sized enterprises. SME’s represent 99 % of all enterprises in the EU and provide around 65 million jobs. If micro enterprises employed one more person each it would contribute tremendously to economic growth.It has been shown that SMEs cooperating with other companies are more competitive. Especially for micro companies it is important to take part in international networks to get new knowledge and to increase innovate capacity and exploit commercial opportunities. Certain groups in society, for example women, face additional difficulties in working in or trying to set up and run businesses.The challenge for very small companies (micro) is that going on export is a big step. They need to take valid time to learn about regulations on different markets; to be aware of financing, to establish sales channels and contacts in other countries. This can be overwhelming.This projects aim to promote female entrepreneurs in micro enterprises to growth by helping them tackle the problems with accessing new markets. The project will work with developing cross-border networks that facilitating their steps to export and international trade. It will be done in two components working interrelated. C3 has the objective to train female entrepreneurs in rules, regulations and methods for exports within different identified branch networks and to implement custom made business meetings between micro companies in the three participating countries. C4 will develop cross-border success teams composed by 8-10 micro companies from the three countries. Here, the enterprises will share experiences, contacts, sales channels. It will provide the single participating enterprise with a deep knowledge of conducting business on three different markets. It will give the participating enterprises almost the same advantage that a big company has with their internationally composed board. The benefit for a single enterprise of the success teams will be unique and speed up their access to new market.The results will be increased business through export and through joint networks between micro companies. The network will be durable, the WRCS (Women Resource centres) will keep the contact data base available for the enterprises after the project and establish a sustainable network to keep provide facilitation for micro enterprises. Achievements: There is a good and fruitful dialogue and contact between partners supported by the development of a well-organized and functional structure for partner meetings and steering committee meetings. Another crucial achievement has been the process of preparing the introduction of the success team method in Lithuania and also the transfer of the method to a cross-border level/practice. The process has been made concrete through workshops and a serie of documents which has been tested in practice and is included in the handbook. The results of the work the first year are five Lithuanian success teams and three cross-border success teams with Swedish and German business women. There has been an excellent development in Lithuania where they have fully griped and efficiently used the method. In the second year five cross border success teams have started with entrepreneurs from Sweden, Germany and Lithuania. An achievement of significance is also the development of the website and the IT-based communication in the project with the launch of a projectblog (English, German and Lithuanian version) and a Facebook page. The introduction of Facebook and the blog as usefull tools for networking and cooperating, was carried out through the workshop "Tools for Communication in the Project" at the Cross-border meeting in Rostock 2012. Especially Facebook has proved to be a well-used and powerful tool. The contacts between the entrepreneurs are developing to concrete cooperation. Going Abroad has established a branch network on www.goingabroad.nu where participating and non-participating business women can present their companies, the different branches they work with and find contacts. The need for meeting-places as the thematic workshops in order to build contacts and confidence as a base for business cooperation as developed in the success teams is very important.There have been six successful cross-border meetings, two in Sweden, two in Germany and two in Lithuania, where the participants have had the opportunity to exchange experiences, get new knowledge and establish good contacts. The cross border meeting are combined with dissemination conferences and there are also three more dissemination conferences, two in Szczecin, Poland and one in Brussels in November 2013 with participation from the Parliament and Commission.At the dissemination conference in Poland new good contacts were made and the method of success teams was given a positive reception. After the conference was a meeting about the Seed Money Project that aims to create a BSR Platform for Gender and Economic Growth. All partners were invited to that meeting and it was a good possibility to use the experiences of Going Abroad in a project in the coming program period. Good contacts were established with Poland, Estonia and Latvia. In the work within the Seed Money project Going Aboad is highlighted as a good example. There is a good interest from other actors to disseminate the results and methods of Going Abroad. The handbook for starting and running Success Teams is published and has met a very good interest. Regional Success Teams was started in Poland in 2014 and also in some of the partners countries. The project partners have decided upon the future of the branch network and the homepage. Partners also discussed future cooperation and how to use and implement the project work and results in the future in the ordinary work and in new projects.
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  • 78.5%   608 322,90
  • 2007 - 2013 South Baltic (PL-SE-DK-LT-DE)
  • Project on KEEP Platform
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