On November 17, 2021, the National Innovation Agency (ANI) has hosted the sixth local stakeholder group meeting of the Innova-FI project in Portugal.
This meeting took place online and focused on the sharing of the lessons learned and good practices of the 8th EoE in Greece, as well as presenting, for the first time, the Innova-FI Action Plan draft to the local stakeholders. This meeting was open to the Portuguese innovation and FI community and gathered 38 participants.
Alexandre Almeida, Project Manager, presented an overview of the activities carried out in Phase 1 of the project. Following this, ANI shared the latest draft of the Action Plan to be implemented in Phase 2, and its two Actions – 3M: Mapping, Meeting and Matchmaking, and FI Lab for Innovative FIs.
The session also included the presentation of two recent initiatives of the National Innovation Agency which constitute innovative tools to promote financial instruments. Luís Ferreira presented the National Competence Centre for Public Procurement, which aims at raising awareness about the advantages of this strategic procurement, facilitating the expansion of knowledge on IPP within all public contracting authorities, and acting to improve market conditions in order to bring closer supply and demand. Américo Bento presented the Portuguese Innovation Portal, an online tool that aims to be a one-stop shop for matchmaking actors in the National Innovation System, search investigators' specific skills, entities that work with specific technologies, find business partners, among many functionalities. In the future, this tool will serve as the basis for further developments to create also a one-stop-shop to match start-ups and investors in the FI ecosystem.
