Fostering collaboration across entrepreneurial ecosystems: Guide to mapping, action plan design and peer learning for regions

Launched in December 2018, the EU project ‘Fostering collaboration through mapping, analysing, and interlinking of European Entrepreneurial Regions’ has the objective of strengthening the impact of existing actions aimed at further developing start-ups and scale-ups in the context of the European Entrepreneurial Regions initiative. The EER Label is granted to regions with an outstanding and innovative entrepreneurial policy strategy, irrespective of their size, wealth, or competences.

The project started with ten regions interlinking in a first phase in 2019-2020, followed by the addition of eight new regions and reinforced priorities for collaboration in September 2020-December 2021. The participating regions are Catalonia, Central Macedonia, Flanders, Île-de-France, Lombardy, Lower Austria, Marche, North Brabant, Western Greece, North and Western Region of Ireland, Asturias, Navarra, Valencia, Gelderland, Northern Ireland, Helsinki-Uusimaa, Pomorskie and Małopolska.

This Guidebook supports and provides guidance to regions on tools to foster entrepreneurial ecosystems through interregional collaboration and to develop related strategic actions in interregional partnerships. Step-by-step guidance is provided on how to identify and map entrepreneurial ecosystems and existing linkages across regions, and how to design interregional Action Plans related to collaboration areas for the regions.