THE CONCEPT OF SMART CAFFE NETWORK
Network of Smart Caffe is both a physical and a virtual space.
As a physical space, Smart Caffeis a combination of an incubator and a business accelerator, providing young people with creative or business ideas with:
– an infrastructure for residents: workspace equipped with furniture, computers, office equipment along with the sharing spaces for meetings, trainings, networking, conferences, etc.;
– workspaces for co-working and networking, collaboration and communication due to innovative hubs created within 13 Higher Education Institutions in Moldova, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia;
– assistance in business launch and development (from developing ideas to entering the market) due to multidimensional extracurricular training program adjusted to the real market requests and needs;
– mentorship and involvement of external specialists in supervising and start-ups development activities though thematic seminars, trainings and consultancy, etc.;
– joint creation of solutions by individuals and start-ups on operational efficiency, production costs, new products creation, innovations creation, building of strategic partnerships and collaborations, etc. (open innovations);
– assistance in attraction of financing for start-ups development;
– “packaging” projects for investors: design and preparation of presentation materials, organization of different networking events, including exhibitions and presentations (pitches) of projects and other services.
In order to streamline the activities carried out in the physical spaces, a virtual extension of the Network of Smart Caffe was created through the SMART Channel (www.smartchannel.org) platform, which allows to effectively strengthen the collaboration between all actors involved in the process of generation, validation and implementation of innovative ideas.
www.smartchannel.org presents a reflection of physical spaces not constrained withinthe borders of one country and allow us to:
- boost knowledge exchange and learning due to multidimensional extracurricular training programs targeting business development by youth;
- create joint open innovations due to design of solutions by individuals and start-ups on operational efficiency, production costs, new products creation, innovations creation with companies, strategic collaborations;
- improve involvement of external specialists due to mentorship activities in start-ups development;
- practice new techniques and improve existing one, learn new things from the best mentors and experts;
- attract financing for start-ups creation, growing and scaleup;
- improvement of the real-time collaboration on topics of joint interest and discussion about innovative ideas and general trends in the industry;
- provision of valuable and useful information from experts’ articles and thematic podcasts;
- support in the search for outsourcing solutions;
- interact through co-working and communication channels;
- participate in networking and collaboration events.