Ea éco-entreprises cluster takes action to finance green innovation!

Submitted by Cristina Casian on 27 November 2020

Between the 2nd and 6th November 2020, Éa éco-entreprises organised a business to finance meeting called “Les rencontres du financement clentech” and organised in the frame of the finMED project (Interreg MED).

The objective of this event was to test in real life the finMED decision support tool and to better define the support provided by clusters and Business Support organisations to enhance collaboration and networking between cleantech SMEs and financers.

Despite the COVID 19 crisis, which forced us to move to a 100% online event, the results are satisfying:

  • 24 participants from 35 registered, succeed to get confirmed B2Fs (business to finance);
  • 10 financers and 13 cleantech SMEs were able to meet online and seek cooperation;
  • 29 qualified meetings took place online and 8 additional meetings will follow wihtin the next weeks;
  • 2 confirmed business to finance meetings per participant in average.

The cluster Ea éco-entreprises assisted both financers and SMEs through the entire process before, during and after the event.

After the meetings and evaluation process (which is not completely closed), some important conclusions can be followed by clusters wishing to organise this type of events:

  • Efficient B2F meetings have to be qualified: the quality of the business to finance meetings has been very much appreciated by the cleantech SMEs;
  • From SMEs perspective, a successful event has to gather together different type of financers:The diversity of financers has been really appreciated by the SMEs;
  • Online meeting is ”time saving”: Online meetings allow networking between people who could maybe not be present at the event otherwise;
  • But, can also became a “loss of time”: if some technical issues happen, such as when one person has trouble to connect;
  • The cluster must ensure the monitoring of the event and assure that is takes place as planned.
  • In this difficult economic context, it is particularly important for SMEs to be supported by the banking sector and the regional players to help them finding the necessary cash flow and resources to ensure the continuity of their innovative green projects.

The first results of this meeting will be followed in the next coming weeks by Ea éco-entreprises in order to get both an overall feedback on the event and on the tool helping us understand how the clusters should support companies in the financing process to get valuable results.

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