It is generally acknowledged that the web entrepreneurship sector can contribute significantly to the competiveness and economic growth of countries and regions. However, Europe is clearly lagging behind given that even though there are lots of European web start-ups, most of them rarely grow up to become global leaders. In this context, the position of women seems particularly weak given that only a very small percentage of them are web entrepreneurs. Taking into account the limited development of web entrepreneurship in Europe as well as the limited participation of women in the web economy the WeHubs project seeks to create a favourable environment for women web entrepreneurs, by linking together local fragmented ecosystems nodes, and foster networking and exploitation of synergies, into the first European Network for Women Web Entrepreneurs Hubs. In this respect the project is aimed at providing a strong support to women web entrepreneurs and existing web entrepreneur’s ecosystems enabling the latter to provide dedicated services to women. As a result the project will foster the creation and scaling of web start-ups created by women (impact on women), strengthen the existing web entrepreneurs ecosystems through networking and complementary services (impact on ecosystems) and support the emergence of a dynamic European ecosystem for women web entrepreneurs contributing to the formulation of relevant policies, support the implementation of start-up Europe initiative and the wider enforcement of the European digital sector (policy impact).

TWIST project aims at connecting four existing local web entrepreneurship startup ecosystems and hubs, providing new services for web entrepreneurs aiming at scaling up and competing in the global market. TWIST consortium includes partners from four cities and regions with complementary profiles and assets: Warsaw, Lille, Rome, and Stockholm .The involved organizations are characterized by a similar typology of skills and expertise and can be classified into two main groups: accelerators, i.e. young, promising and already successful accelerators wishing to enlarge their collaborations and financial investors and/or services providers, acting as direct investors leveraging with private seed funds and/or, at the same time, providing highly qualified services for startups looking for equity funds or scaling up. TWIST key objectives are: support the creation of competitive startups in web and mobile sector, exchanging methodologies and competencies among the four ecosystems stakeholders, promote activities to cut the high failure rate of startups, favour cross-fertilization and funding opportunities. To reach its goals TWIST will provide: mentoring and coaching services for better understanding business models, financial technicalities for accessing finance for growth; a customized online platform to facilitate the meetups of web entrepeneurs with vertical,technical and legal experts, serial entrepreneurs and big industries; the creation of co-working laboratories and the organization of challenges for startups with the involvement of big players; pitching events with investors during the main international events . In line with Startup Europe Partnership (SEP) and with the specific call priorities, TWIST platform will focus on web entrepreneurs and will support them with services aiming at: valorizing the talents, favouring a better access to capital, developing the concept of co-living and co-working and link the startups ecosystems across EU.

InnoCreate is an ambitious coordination and support action aiming to stimulate the growth of the creative industries in Europe by overcoming challenges at individual SME level (small size, problems with access to finance, barriers to new market entry…), at the innovation support level (disparity in availability and quality of support) and at overall creative industry level (fragmentation, localisation…). InnoCreate will respond by networking innovation support players and harnessing their regional strengths into a European ecosystem of supports to respond more effectively to SME needs. Two specific end user groups of SMEs will be targeted through InnoCreate: creative industry SMEs exploiting advanced technologies and ICT SMEs innovating in the field of creative industries. Both of these target groups will be equally supported. SMEs will benefit from an imaginative programme of communication and support actions: InnoCreate will piggy-back on the Creative Business Cup to raise awareness about the ICT Challenge competition, network SMEs throughout Europe at the InnoCreate International Camps and provide customised one to one supports for the most promising SMEs with high growth potential. InnoCreate galvanises existing structures by bringing together three strong existing European networks – EBN, CKO and the ECB Network and a network of innovation multipliers at regional level. The InnoCreate service offering aims to be immediately accessible online and ‘on-site’ in 15 EU partner and associate partner countries with a target of engaging further stakeholders to deliver the support services in all EU member states by the project end. The impact of InnoCreate will be tangible – for individual SMEs, for innovation support actors and for the growth of the European creative industries as a whole.