Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (EASME)
Strategic alliances for the uptake of advanced technologies by SMEs on the economic recovery - COS-STRAT-2020-3-05

The STARS proposal aims to develop a pilot-project that offers a comprehensive approach to the Action objectives. It gathers 11 Railway Clusters

organisations from 13 regions in 9 COSME countries (but covering 14 countries), 5 Technology Centres selected following a value-chain approach

and offering complementary specialisations suitable to accompany any type of SME for any type of transition need, and 1 start-up developer and

provider of a blockchain network that will be specifically made available and dedicated to the project for the European railway value chain, with the

Partners becoming distributed “Mining Nodes” and the SMEs within the Strategic Alliances being coached, enabled with individual accounts and a

wide set of tagging systems, and assisted in the actual use of the technology. This unique opportunity will multiply the impact of the demonstration

and learning-by-doing activities run by the Technology Centres, as well as of the “Hack & Match” events that we will organise, so that the SMEs

within the Strategic Alliances and beyond will actually touch first-hand the technologies applied to their use-cases.

The project has the support of 30 key relevant European organisations, among which the EU JU Shift2Rail, several DIHs, several EEN contact

points, several members of EITs/KICs.

The project will answer the Action objectives addressing all aspects related to the uptake of Advanced Technologies by SMEs. For this, the

activities developed for the SMEs will include support to the organisational/cultural change based on innovative models, support to a better

understanding of investment aspects and return-on-investments (ROI) related to the adoption of Advanced Technologies, training and assistance

on funding opportunities for investments, support for upskilling and reskilling, etc.. In reference to the latter, during the Kick-off meeting the

Partnership will sign the “Pact for Skills” charter, committing to a stronger European resilience also via new skills.