20-23 April, 2009
Dubai, UAE

DIT SMEs Forum
holding
V INSME Annual Meeting
on

Building a Knowledge based eco-system for SMEs: Finance, Innovation, Technology and Networking

The European Trade Association for Early Stage Investors (EBAN) has recently published its Statement on the impact of the financial and economic crisis which is affecting business angels and early-stage investment activities across Europe. The main aim of this statement is to provide business angels and early stage investors with solutions that should be implemented across Europe to support growth and innovation during these challenging times.

 Download the EBAN Statement on the Impact of the financial crisis.

The Plataforma de Entidades Europeas is a Chilean platform designed in the framework of the Support for the Creation and Development of Innovative Companies program, launched by the Chilean Government (InnovaChile CORFO) and the European Union, with the aim to increase the business cooperation between European and Chilean SMEs in the field of innovation and technology transfer. Furthermore, the platform facilitates the involvement of European business consultants in innovation activities in Chile. In particular, the INSME association has introduced this platform to some of its members (ABCnet; Aster; CODEX; INNOVA S.p.A.; UNIDO ITPO Italy) that joined this initiative in December.

Read more at:
http://www.plataforma.eurochilevirtual.com/

Find out from Ms. Martine Diss, from the Executive Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation (EACI) how the Enterprise Europe Network helps European Small and Medium Enterprises to grow and face their innovation needs. The Network was launched in February 2008 by the European Commission with the aim to encourage competitiveness in European businesses by making of the main driver for innovation: the transfer of technology and knowledge from researchers to entrepreneurs and from business to business.

Read the INSME Interview with Ms. Diss at:
http://www.insme.org/

Read other INSME Interviews at:
http://www.insme.org/

If you are interested in an interview with INSME, please contact:
secretariat@insme.it

Recently launched during the DLD (Digital, Life, Design) Conference held in Munich, Germany on 25th January 2009, Informilo is a new website sponsored by the European Trade Association for Early Stage Investors - EBAN (INSME Member).

This new on-line media site covers tech sector developments in Europe, in the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and in the Americas with the aim to help start-ups and their investors to benchmark the global competition and connect with big corporates.

Read more about Informilo at:
http://www.informilo.com/

The Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South (COMSATS - INSME Member from 2004) is an International inter-governmental organisation aimed at enhancing South-South cooperation using Science and Technology as a tool for sustainable progress in the developing world. Its mission is to sensitize countries in the South (see list of Countries) to the importance of the science and technology in the socio-economic development process.

COMSATS will release, from March onwards, a two-monthly newsletter to cover news, activities, highlight scientific and technological breakthroughs and reviews from around the globe relevant to the needs of the South in terms of developments.

For further information on COMSATS, please visit the newly restyled and enriched version of COMSATS website:
http://www.comsats.org.pk

The Skoll Foundation has launched its Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship supporting social entrepreneurs working in five critical sub-issue areas- climate change, nuclear proliferation, pandemics, conflict in the Middle East and water scarcity.

The Skoll Awards provide later-stage funding, which is generally structured as a $1 million award paid out over three years.

The Award Ceremony will be presented publicly at a ceremony at the Skoll World Forum, which occurs at the end of every March in Oxford, England.

The deadline for submission is March 3, 2009 and August 12, 2009.

For additional information as well as to set your application, please refer to:
http://www.skollfoundation.org/skollawards/index.asp.

The 7th Joint CORNET Call for Transnational Collective Research Project proposals in any industrial field will be open until 30 April, 2009. See the list of Countries and Regions participating in CORNET.

For more information on CORNET and the 7th Joint Call please visit:
http://www.cornet-era.net/

The 4th EUROTRANS-BIO (ETB) call for proposals Funding of Industrial R&D Projects in Biotechnology will be open until the 27th April, 2009.

Funding is intended to support research intensive SMEs and their strategic partnerships in all fields of biotechnology.

Download the 4th ETB Transnational Call 2009.

Stay tuned with the ERA-NET EUROTRANS-BIO website for updates:
http://eurotransbio.net/

The 5th call for trans-national projects of the ERA-NET EraSME initiative will be open until March 31, 2009 with 12 participating funding programs from the following regions/countries: Austria, Belgium/Flanders, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy/Tuscany, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain/Madrid, and Sweden.

For detailed information and relevant documents see section "Help Desk" at:
http://www.era-sme.net/

InnovAccess and IPR-Helpdesk joined together their efforts to provide better information on intellectual property rights (IPR) to small and medium-sized companies in Europe on the new joint website. A specific information section, provided directly by National Patent Offices, OHIM and EPO, on the different IP national protection procedures is available. This initiative is part of IPeuropAware project (IP Awareness and Enforcement: Modular Based Actions for SMEs, financed by the European Commission under the CIP programme).

For further information on InnovAccess please click here

Seedcamp is an initiative founded by a group of experienced angels and VC investors across Europe, particularly involved in the UK, with the aim of providing young entrepreneurs with seed funding for the development of innovative and competitive products and start ups from across EMEA (Europe, Middle-East and Africa) Countries.

For more details on Seedcamp please visit the site at:
http://seedcamp.com/

The European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) is a report prepared by the Maastricht Economic and Social Research and Training Centre on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT) on the comparative analysis of EU27 Member States innovation performance. This eighth edition presents a stronger focus on services, non-technological aspects, and outputs of innovation and also includes trend analyses for Croatia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, Japan, Australia, Canada, USA and Israel.

Despite increased investment in research by many Member States and an improved efficiency in their research system, the report concludes that the EU is still far from reaching the Lisbon Agenda target.

 Download for free the EIS 2008.

For further information please visit the site at http://www.proinno-europe.eu/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.display&topicID=437&parentID=51

SciDev.Net (the Science and Development Network) is a portal dedicated to the latest developments in science and technology that affect the developing countries.
It also provides a free listing service for announcements, events and grants relating to science, technology and development as well as a practical guidance and specialist workshops on developing countries' capacity for communicating science and technology.

Read more at http://www.scidev.net/en/

Microfinanzas.org is the Network of Microfinance Organisation Portals in Latin American managed by the Fundación Galileo based in Costa Rica. The portal aims at strengthening the microfinance access in Latin American regions by providing information services through the creation of a Web Portal Network, an Information Centre and other web-based information services.

Learn more about Portales Microfinanzas America Latina available only in Spanish.

The EU-Japan is the free quarterly newsletter of the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation, a joint venture co-financed by the European Commission and the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). It provides news and detailed information on the EU-Japan Centre's activities, on coming seminars and events as well as information on activities concerning different aspects of the EU-Japan Centre cooperation.

 Download the latest issue of EU-Japan Newsletter.
http://documents.eujapan.eu/media/publications/newsletter/december08.pdf

For further information please visit the recently restyled websites of the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation - EU office and the head office in Japan.