Being an innovative SME is a rough job. The founders are die-harders that have worked the lower part of their back off to build up their company. But they can’t sit still even when they have passed the first dangerous years – they have to keep moving on improving their technologies and solutions and fend off competitors and large industrial companies that might go into their market.

The EU Commission is doing a lot of efforts to support the SMEs of the continent. On the funding side the target is to take off the majority of the risk to develop new technologies and get the SMEs involved in quality international collaborations.

Esen Kunt is an old contact of mine and she is working as R&D Manager in the Turkish ICT SME Faradai. The company develops software for energy efficiency control in buildings and as such is operating at the very heart of one of technology areas that the EU Commission is focused strongly on. They are using EU R&D funding as a core part of their innovation strategy to develop as a company.

I invited her in for a talk about the company, the conditions of being a technology developing SME in a highly competitive market and how EU funding is pushing the company forward technically at the same time as it helps with the risk. Of course very interesting for any SME representative out there, but also valuable insights for SME support organisations facilitating EU R&D funding.

Time codes:

00:02:24 Introduction

00:06:49 Fly in on Faradai and the background for approaching EU funding

00:15:00 The world of the innovative SME

00:30:57 EU funding - door breaker or treacherous sea for SMEs

01:15:59 A piece of advice

01:23:11 The toughest challenge