As EEN was established in Switzerland, it was natural to place this task at Euresearch so that the expertise that was built could also benefit small- and medium-size enterprises. Although the Swiss model at first seems to provide optimal opportunities for synergies by combining innovation and business support and letting both pull in the same direction, it has proven difficult to get this to work in practice. Euresearch is primarily a university organisation and does not have many contacts with SMEs; this has had to be built with EEN. The advantage of the Swiss model is the strong regional presence and the close contacts with the universities. This has been used as a stepping stone to coupling research at universities with innovation activities in small- and medium-size enterprises and funding from the EU. In addition, the model is at the same time, centralised and decentralised. At the head office in Bern, all national contact points are located, and expert knowledge is in this way systematically spread out to the regional offices that carry out the more specific tasks, such as guidance and counselling for researchers and enterprises. This avoids building parallel expert systems for business and innovation support.
Side 22