Promoting entrepreneurship by supporting promising innovative ideas through pre-incubating mechanisms

Acronym	CO-WORKING
Project Number – MIS	5070814
Priority axis	1 - A Competitive and Innovative Cross-Border Area
Investment priorities	3a - Promoting entrepreneurship, in particular by facilitating the economic exploitation of new ideas and fostering the creation of new firms, including through business incubators
Intervention fields	066. Advanced support services for SMEs and groups of SMEs (including management, marketing and design services)
Call	6th CALL FOR PROJECT PROPOSALS
Lead Beneficiary	A.I.Z. S.A - Alexander Innovation Zone S.A.
Beneficiaries	NATIONAL COMPANY INDUSTRIAL ZONES PLC SPECIAL ACCOUNT FOR RESEARCH FUNDS - ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI UNIVERSITY OF NATIONAL AND WORLD ECONOMY
Start Date	Apr 13, 2021
End Date	Jul 12, 2023
Budget	585.712,30 €
ERDF Contribution	497.855,46 €
National Contribution	87.856,85 €
Website	https://coworking-grbg.com/

CO-WORKING project envisages a set of innovative actions by creating two pre-incubating supporting mechanisms which aim to accelerate early-stage teams to validate the potential of an innovative business idea under real conditions before taking business risk in order to overcome the so-called “death valley”. The project involves among others, training, mentoring, coaching activities as well as boot camps, pitching and demo-day events. The mission of the pre-incubators will be to catalyze an innovation ecosystem in the c-b area, which will bring the local partners together, hence startup founders, industry, academia, investors, and other incubators, aiming to facilitate knowledge and take promising ideas to the next stage, by initiating an holistic approach.
On this basis, the project addresses a holistic pre-incubation program in the c-b area. Within the context of Bootcamp weeks, the early-stage teams will have the opportunity to: (a) Get the basic skills on the Business Model Canvas (BMC). (b) Launch the fundamentals of the Lean Startup Methodology (LSM) covering the span from the stage in which a team has conceptualized an idea up to the point the startup has been incorporated and has an initial client base.  (c) Validate the assumptions of product/service concept. After the Bootcamp weeks pitching events will be organized in front of evaluation committees. Acceleration Phase encompasses intense Masterclass training, followed by coaching and mentoring. Coached support will be pointing to more specialist advice including advice on generic issues, where it is needed and justified by the progress of the hosted team. Also, mentoring services will be granted to areas in which the hosted team operates (or intends to operate). In some cases, the mentor could be a potential client. During this stage, key-milestones have to be delivered by the teams, involving the topics of (a) competition analysis, (b) customer segmentation and (c) market validation.
The pre – incubator’s ecosystem will be organized on the base of CO-WORKING SPACE as well as on the creation of a mobile advisory unit. It will be interconnected with the Universities’ Career Offices and with any other constitution related to innovation and social entrepreneurship.