Support Programme for Innovative Business Groupings - more information 

The Programme for Innovative Business Groupings envisages several different lines of support for setting up and strengthening these types of grouping. These lines are:

• Aid for drafting strategic plans.
• Aid for financing the coordination, management, and administration structures of the Innovative Business Groupings that have been set up.
• Aid for drafting specific projects that aim to strengthen the innovative potential of the companies involved in the grouping.
• Aid for promoting joint actions or collaborative projects between different Innovative Business Groupings.

These may be two Spanish groupings or one Spanish grouping and another group or cluster that shares similar characteristics and is located in another EU country.

Based on this understanding of the nature of Innovative Business Groupings, it is clear that the Programme must be selective, and for this reason, applications to the Programme are staggered into three different stages.

During the first stage, which includes aid for drafting strategic plans, the clusters or groupings that meet the abovementioned characteristics are identified. Those groupings with a strategic plan that is considered to be excellent are entered into the Special Register for Innovative Business Groupings of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism, and Trade and, from that time, they will be able to access the other lines of the Programme run by the Directorate-General of SME Policy (DGPYME) for Innovative Business Groupings, and enjoy preferential access to the programmes created by other units of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism, and Trade.

Any groups, groupings, or associations set up as non-profit bodies, whose characteristics, aims, and requirements correspond with the abovementioned definition of Innovative Business Groupings are eligible to apply for the aid given for the drafting of strategic plans. Other groups also eligible to apply for this aid are non-profit bodies and agencies or other public bodies dedicated to fostering economic development within their autonomous community or at a local level and whose activities aim to boost Innovative Business Groupings.

The remaining lines included in the programme are solely available to those bodies that have been inscribed in the Special Register for Innovative Business Groupings of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism, and Trade.

Details of the Programme

The programme was set up in 2007 and during this year support was only provided for the strategic plans of company groups that were in keeping with the model established by the Innovative Business Groupings set up by the Ministry of Industry, Tourism, and Trade. The programme’s scope of action grew in 2008 and the first batch of groupings to be inscribed in the Special Register for Innovative Business Groupings of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism, and Trade were selected. The inscribed Innovative Business Groupings were also given aid to improve how their organizational structures operated and to help them prepare collaboration projects dedicated to innovation. Currently, there are 49 Innovative Business Groupings inscribed, which represents a total of 1,207 companies and 232 bodies dedicated to research, training, etc. The total number of employees in the companies that form part of these Innovative Business Groupings comes to approximately 240,000.

From the point of view of new initiatives to be developed in connection with this programme, the following are worth particular attention:

• Strengthen coordination between the Ministry of Industry, Tourism, and Trade and the Autonomous Communities so that the experiences garnered from the policies of developed clusters can be shared and coordinate support initiatives.
• Facilitate coordination between the Innovative Business Groupings inscribed in the Ministry of Industry, Tourism, and Trade and the coordination between these and other clusters receiving support from their autonomous community.
• Foster the cooperation of the Innovative Business Groupings and other clusters located in Spain with clusters in other countries making the most of the possibilities available at a European Community level thanks to the INNET project included in the EU’s INNOVA initiative.