Scale SME

SCALE SMEs (SCALing up in the creative industries for SMEs and self-employed) is an Erasmus KA2 project aiming to provide innovative tools to cultural and creative professionals enabling them to improve their competencies and skills in the scaling up of their businesses, in a sustainable and competitive way. Developing specific training tools aimed at supporting people working in Creative and Cultural Industries (CCI) to improve their competencies and skills.The project “supports the uptake of innovative approaches and digital technologies for teaching and learning”, according to one of the EU VET priorities, by the development of an innovative training model, specifically addressed to Creative and Cultural Industries.

The project consortium is made up of six partners: ENTER (Croatia), KEK ORAMA (West Macedonia, Greece), ROMAGNA TECH (Emilia Romagna, Italy), SASA (Slovenia), ARGO (Italy) and Innogestiona (Spain).

Why Scale SME?

Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) are considered by EU Commission as a driving force to promote innovation and economic growth in EU countries. In the context of the global competition, increasingly relying on the ability of knowledge assets to produce new value adding products and solutions, culture and creativity are seen as being key resources in contemporary innovation and value creation processes as well as a driver of social value and wellbeing.

CCIs, in fact, are considered as a powerful mean to pursue local development goals. However, dedicated research reveals that most CCIs consists of small and medium-sized no-profit organizations and self-employed entrepreneurs and practitioners who have difficulties in scaling up the scope and seize of their activities and business.

Challenge: lack of business resources

The lack of business resources is because most of cultural and creative organizations traditionally suffer from a severe lack of basic business resources, which limits greatly their ability to seize growth opportunities and develop.

This lack of basic business knowledge and skills has been indicated as one of the most critical issues hindering the ability of CCIs to support the emergence of more effective and systematic processes of business growth. In this regard, there are also major concerns about the ability of CCIs to sustain adequate levels of job-creation, social participation, and local development. All these elements, actually, are directly connected to the overall ability of CCIs to grow and generate greater economic value and returns to society.