11 November 2009

Over 90% of SMEs consider their participation in EU funded project a success. How can we learn from their experiences?

Obtaining public funding is one way of overcoming this financial gap and increasing the chances of survival for high-tech, small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The EU 6th and 7th framework programmes are one source of these funds.


The recent study conducted by KAPPA-Health found that over 90% of research-intensive SMEs having participated in a FP6 co-financed research project considered their participation as a success and 50% of these have already generated commercial return.


The first step of the KAPPA-Health project involved surveying nearly 200 SMEs to ascertain these “success factors” and interesting results can be seen below. The second step, already underway, will involve interviewing a further selected 40 companies for in-depth interviews and analysis. Participation in an EU funded project was a complete success for 58% of the SMEs that answered our questionnaire.


Fig.1: Distribution of answer to the question: is the project a success in term of the results obtained?


Knowledge is the main result obtained by at least 80% of the SMEs. Only one SME in our sample did not obtain any interesting results.


Fig.2: Distribution of the results obtained

Furthermore, SMEs have stated that their participation in EU projects allowed them to increase their network, find new customers, access complementary expertise and become more visible at an international level. Getting commercially exploitable results from their participation in the research project was not mentioned as the main objective. This is not surprising as the criteria for participation in FP6/FP7 is to develop pre-competitive scientific research.

76% of successful enterprises have participated in projects which corresponded to their core activity. Typically successful companies have also participated in more than one project (80%) and had previous contacts with their partners. For most successful SMEs, 83% of the projects lead to research contacts and 50% to business contracts.

In general, SMEs prefer to participate in small or medium size projects which are easier to manage.

We can identify a preliminary list of key success factors that allow a company to benefit from its participation in EU research projects and to prove viability of new technologies in view of commercialisation:


  • The project should preferably be in line with the SMEs core activity.

  • The project initiators and even coordinators should preferably have been involved in a previous FP research project. The second project presented by an SME is often more successful than the first one.

  • The preparation of a project with an expert or the support of specialised services can help to better identify the role of each partner and expected results.

  • For an SME, it is best to be involved in FP projects with partners from an existing network.

  • SMEs prefer smaller projects: the size of an SME and the size of the project may influence the relationship between partners. If an SME is small, it will have more difficulty finding its place and being successful in larger projects.

  • SMEs should take advantage of their academic research close environment : Spin- offs from universities or organised clusters seem to be favoured by their pre- existing research networks.


Another important aspect is that 90% of the SMEs participating in FP6 projects have been able to co-finance the project by internal funding with a combination of external private and public funds for 15% of the amount.

Availability of regional public funding is also crucial to meet the complementary funds required to conduct EU funded research.