POLICY ANSWERS Capacity Building success in Serbia

Project partner Institute Mihajlo Pupin (IMP) organized five workshops in four different regions of Serbia – in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Čačak and Niš – as part of the POLICY ANSWERS project which also powers the Western Balkans Info Hub.

It was an intensive and dynamic roadshow performed from March 27-April 21, across four Serbian regions: Vojvodina, Belgrade, Central Serbia and South Serbia. Four basic and one advanced workshop on digital transformation in the SME sector attracted huge attention and 138 representatives of small and medium enterprises and business support organizations (including also some representatives of academia) attended.

The structure of the attendees was almost gender balanced although women slightly prevailed: 73 vs 65 in favour of women.

IMP built partnerships with two regional Chamber of Commerce (in Niš and Vojvodina) as well as with the Science and Technology Park in the town of Čačak. Synergies were achieved with the Enterprise Europe Network project and its partners in Serbia and as well in Bosnia and Herzegovina as also the Development Agency and the Chamber of Commerce of the Republic of Srpska supported the b2b networking which was held in the framework of the first workshop in Belgrade on March 27.

The evaluation of the events showed very positive results. The average event ratings reported are (with 5 being the best):

1. rate the event as a whole 4.83
2. rate the speaker(s)/trainers 4.90
3. rate the usefulness for daily work 4.49

News about the event were published through various sources, such as Linkedin and the IMP website, as well as the partners who participated in the organisation. There was also a presentation on the local TV in the town of Čačak, TV Lav plus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djpzMrSd8U4&t=189s

Apart from the synergies with other EU-funded projects like enterprise Europe Network, the synergy was achieved also with the plans of the POLICY ANSWERS project to establish a Western Balkans Regional Innovation Academy (WB RIA). The five workshops were filmed and the interviews with the entrepreneurs on their experience in attending workshops on Digital Transition will be used for the WB RIA platform.