Investment in research and development does not bring money overnight, insiders warn, but mostly add that such investments pay off in the medium term – through the launch of new products, increased production, exports, and productivity. They also confirm the experience of an excellent sales and marketing tool, especially in foreign B2B markets. The very fact that an unknown company from some Croatia is capable of meeting the demands of Eurocrats brings a significant competitive advantage.
Protočni bojler
Smart specialization strategies are, in this sense, a solid flow boiler for channeling money from European funds into research, development, and innovation of Croatian companies. This segment (R&D) is the Achilles’ heel of the domestic business scene. Money for this purpose is prepared in several drawers – from a series of programs from the European Structural and Investment Fund (ESIF) to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NPOO). The five selected sectors from the previous Strategy period, 2016 – 2020, have been enriched with a new area – digital products and platforms, while the area of food and biochemistry has been divided into food and wood parts. Other ‘priority areas’ (health, energy, transport, and security) remain among the priorities, only with slightly different names and definitions.
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Seven Priority Sectors
- Personalized health care
- Smart and clean energy
- Smart and green transport
- Security and dual-use: awareness, prevention, response, and remediation
- Sustainable and circular food
- Customized and integrated wood products
- Digital products and platforms
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However, more important than definitions is, of course – the available money. To date, the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Science and Education, based on the previous Strategy, have signed about a thousand contracts with entrepreneurs for around one billion euros in non-repayable grants.
Equally generous is the new tranche – from 2021 to 2029. In the draft strategy proposal, projects worth more than one and a half billion euros are planned. Almost 1.2 billion euros will be available from European funds (of which 38 percent from NPOO), 60 million from the budget, and users are expected to co-finance projects with a total of 327 million euros.
The smallest profit the most
It is crucial to engage small entrepreneurs in research and development programs. Namely, while large companies with established logistics routinely reach into the European treasury, the new strategy document cites data showing that the largest increase in productivity when investing in research and development and intangible assets is recorded by micro-enterprises and young companies. One just needs to dare.
The owner of the Alius group, Predag Krndija, dared. First, he withdrew money for research and development for the Pharmabox project, a smart box for temperature-controlled transport of medicines, and then for the commercialization of innovations and internationalization. He has withdrawn almost half a million euros on three occasions, and now he is applying for a digitalization competition. He is one of the entrepreneurs working to take as large a share of the available money as possible. The only important thing is that the basic project is sustainable, and then European funds for R&D are a welcome ‘boost’.
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You can read the complete analysis with a list of programs that will be co-financed in the digital and printed edition of Lider.
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