Services
Access to markets
To expand your business internationally, you need competent and reliable partners.
Our database contains thousands of corporate profiles from over 60 countries in Europe and beyond. The Network also organizes Business-to-Business (B2B) meetings with potential partners through large fairs and exhibitions.
With tens of new business profiles added weekly, our business cooperation database is one of the biggest of its kind in the world.
Here at the Network, we can develop your business profile or declare your interest to a potential foreign partner within the database. In this way, we assist you in establishing your first contact with organizations suitable for the internationalization of your business.
The Network organizes bilateral business meetings (B2B) throughout Europe and in other places around the world, where you can personally negotiate with potential business partners based on preliminary scheduled meetings. These events are often held during international fairs and exhibitions, which helps for optimization of travel and accommodation costs. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemics, the events are increasingly organized virtually or hybridly, thus allowing for additional cost optimization.
Whether you find new business partners via our database or during an event, we will assist you both during the initial contact and during the conclusion of your contract.
Visit the central information portal of the Network to find suitable foreign partners: https://een.ec.europa.eu/partnering-opportunities
You can also take part in our Innovative Enterprise of the Year contest, in the “Market leadership category”, if you have an innovation already successful on international markets.
See this short video from the world media exhibition IBC in Amsterdam to understand how the Network’s bilateral meetings take place.
Access to finance
Participation in an R&D or innovation project financed by the EC is a wonderful way to enhance your company’s competitiveness.
Enterprise Europe Network helps you take advantage of this opportunity. Our experts will assist you in defining your needs and potential and in connecting with the relevant partners for your future projects.
Enterprise Europe Network doesn’t finance projects, but it can help you take part in project proposals with EU funding – under the EU framework programmes, the regional cooperation programmes, the European fund for regional development.
What do you need to successfully participate in a European project? – A persuasive idea and a good team above all.
In Enterprise Europe Network we can:
- assess your technological potential and the available funding opportunities;
- help you define your project idea;
- find the right partners for you;
- improve your skills for project development and management;
- assist you in reaching cooperation agreements.
We can help you in the assessment of your company’s financial state and in finding the appropriate funding sources.
The investors’ funding can be supported by regional, national or European authorities as well.
Consult with our experts how you can get access to public funding for R&D, innovations, investments, consultancy, employment, training or export.
We can also assist you with information about the specific funding opportunities, available to start-ups – acceleration programmes, incubators, special schemes, procedures and platforms for project funding, etc.
You can also take part in our Innovative Enterprise of the Year Contest in the “Innovative Start-up” category, if you are a start-up and have developed an innovation.
New technologies
You are looking for a specific technology or innovation to boost your business?
If you have your own innovative technology or product, we can assist you in its reaching the right partners.
Enterprise Europe Network has the biggest data base in Europe for up-to-date technologies and business applications, containing thousands of announcements and being under regular update. The Network’s experts can develop an individual profile for your offered or requested technology, which will be distributed via the data base, or they can express your interest to already published announcements, that intrigued you.
If you do not know where to start from, our experts can visit you to discuss the opportunities for technological development or for realization of your innovative idea.
With your technological profile you can take part in the Network’s bilateral business meetings (B2B) around Europe and all over the world, where you can negotiate yourself with relevant potential partners according to a preliminary defined meeting schedule. These events are usually organized during international fairs and exhibitions, where the new technologies meet with businesses.
You can also take part in our Innovative Enterprise of the Year contest with your innovation.
Intellectual property
Enterprise Europe Network will help you in orientating about the ways of intellectual results’ protection in order to profit from your ideas and innovations.
Do you need assistance for your intellectual property protection in other countries? Do you know the terms within which this should happen, what are the ways of doing it and how to optimize your costs?
ARC Consulting is the European IP Helpdesk Ambassador for Bulgaria and our experts can give you information about the options of intellectual property protection in the country and abroad following the national, regional and/or international routes, as well as about the functioning of:
- European Patent System
- Community Design Registration System
- Community Trademark Registration System
- Patent Cooperation Treaty System
- Hague System for the International Registration of Industrial Designs
- Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks
We can also provide you further information about the international aspects of intellectual property protection and connect you with Bulgarian, European and international intellectual property experts – this will save you time and efforts.
Innovation management
You need to improve the efficiency of your innovative projects?
You want to step on new markets and to achieve new competitive advantages?
Enterprise Europe Network offers you the opportunity to do this with the help of instruments for the analysis of company’s innovation processes management and individual advisory support.
SMEs’ benefits from innovation management assessment:
- self-analysis of the management processes, connected with the company’s innovation activity;
- in-depth report with benchmarking analysis with leading companies in the branch and on the markets, where the enterprise is present;
- consultancy support and expertise;
- opportunity for improvement of SMEs’ competitiveness and for the achievement of higher growth based on more effective management of their innovative activities.
Innovation Health Check
Innovation Health Check will help you determine the extent of innovativeness of your company, as far as it’s designed to assess you innovation process. The instrument analyses from the very beginning how the process takes place, taking into consideration your consumers’ needs (declared and non-declared), the generation of ideas, concept development and product/services creation until the commercialization phase together with all the transitional steps.
The analysis will check how your innovation process is influenced by your:
- corporate culture,
- understanding for all aspects of the business,
- business strategy,
- corporate structure,
- enterprise abilities and resources and
- innovation processes’ level.
Innovation Health Check gives you the opportunity to:
- compare your performance with the one of your competitors,
- identify your strengths and weaknesses,
- get ideas for improvement of your innovation processes,
- take fact-based decisions about your innovation activity and
- improve your competitiveness and expand.
The instrument is developed by Enterprise Ireland, part of EEN.
Digitalization
You want to integrate digital technologies in your business processes?
If you want to introduce a digital solution into your activity or to transform your business processes with the help of digital technologies, we can help you:
- find the necessary digital technology
- or the provider you need – in order to develop a customized digital technology responding to your necessities in the greatest extent,
- or to adapt his already existing solutions to respond to them.
If you have developed a digital solution and look for partners to whom to offer it, we can give you information about:
- organizations looking for similar solutions – in order to integrate them into their activity,
- brokerage events dedicated on digitalization, where you can meet the partners you need.
If your digital solution is not fully developed to enter the market and you need partners and funding to finalize the R&D process, we can:
- provide useful information about existing opportunities for R&D project funding to help you in this regard,
- assist you in finding other organizations looking for partners for collaborative project application in order to develop your project proposal together.
You can also take part in our Innovative Enterprise of the Year contest in the categories “Digital Transformation” and “Innovation in the Creative Industries” if you have developed innovations in those fields.
Sustainable development
You are transforming your business into a sustainable business model and you are looking for green innovations?
We can assist you in fields such as:
- resource efficiency and technological innovations
- lowering your activity’s impact on the environment
- decreasing the pollution and waste
- circular economy – waste recycling and reuse of resources
- specifics of renewable energy sources
- energy efficiency
- introduction of green technologies
- offering of green products and services on the market.
We can give you information and support for:
- finding of new foreign partners for business, research and technological cooperation in the field of eco-friendly development based on our vast data base,
- your participation in information and brokerage events dedicated on sustainable development issues – in order to learn about new opportunities for your activity in this field and to meet potential new partners,
- the access to finance for eco innovations and green entrepreneurship, including via participation in EU funded projects,
- export of your green solutions on new markets,
- technology transfer in the domain of green innovations.
You can also take part in our Innovative Enterprise of the Year contest in the categories “Green Innovation”, “Quality of Life” and “Social Innovation” if you have developed innovations in those fields.
