How it all started

The WG SME was set up by ARTEMIS Industry Association in January 2009. High-tech SMEs are an important link in the value chain for systems and solutions, and are expected to play an essential role in the capitalisation and dissemination of the technologies. With collaboration with large industry considered crucial for SMEs, the Innovation Environment model supported by ARTEMIS seems to offer the proper mechanisms to facilitate these synergies with the key players in the embedded world.

Objectives

In the past few years, several initiatives have been set up from SME WG, with activities of varying intensity. In the new framework 2014-2020, we aim to revitalise the Working Group with the main objective of properly reflecting and supporting the interests of SMEs in this new period. It is important to mention that another ambitious goal of the working group is to see ARTEMIS projects being boosted and coordinated by SMEs.

Results so far

Up till now, the WG SME has helped to achieve the following objectives:

• To enable a chamber to have a member in ARTEMIS Industrial Association Presidium.
• To give SMEs visibilty in the magazine with at least one article in the ARTEMIS Magazine about SMEs. Different types of articles are published, such as interviews with relevant companies, information on participating in ARTEMIS, statistics of participation in projects and proposals, or success stories.
• We helped provide input about SME participation for national brokerage events.
• We organised a survey about the needs of SMEs, and tried to link these needs to specific actions to overcome them by reflecting these in the strategic documents that guide and set the scene on R&I on Embedded & Cyber-Physical Systems in Europe. These documents are the SRA, MASRIA and Annual Work Programmes. We also to facilitate the administrative requirements and procedures for the participation of SMEs in ARTEMIS projects.
• We also implemented a section of SME expertise in the ARTEMIS Industry Association web pages, whose objective is to enhance the visibility of our enterprises in the embedded ecosystem, as well as facilitate new contacts and synergies.

Future

We now have to revitalise the actions to be performed by WG SMEs to ensure that our companies have the opportunity to participate in research and innovation activities in the new H2020 framework and to get our interests considered in the strategic agendas.

In this period of transition between FP7 and H2020, it is essential to be active and guarantee that our voices are taken into account from the beginning. For this reason the main actions we plan to tackle in WG SME are:

• To strengthen, improve and follow up of the actions cited above: we need to influence the SRA, MASRIA, be represented in the Presidium, provide visibility of our companies in the magazine, website, and facilitate participation in events…
• To promote at least one SME representative in each ARTEMIS Working Group. This would help that SME viewpoint get represented in the different WGs, to facilitate the communication among different actors, as well as to have first-hand access to information about different activities and to influence the decision-making at different levels.
• To implement a systematic way to collect needs from SMEs to be presented in the Presidium and in the Steering Board.
• To provide large industry and research institutions with access to our Working Group.

Credits

It is important to note that the success of this Working Group needs the collaboration and involvement of a critical mass of SMEs as well as the support of the ARTEMIS Industry Association office. It is not possible to get good results, and our interests will be not be heard, with the participation of just three or four persons in this Working Group.