Grant Map EU

Statistics (2020) show large differences in the South Baltic (SB) regions’ level of digitalization. The Digital Intensity Index, measuring the use of different digital technologies at enterprise level, shows room for improvement in all SB countries, as only about 50% of enterprises in Denmark and Sweden are categorized as very high or high, while about 30% in Germany and Lithuania, and 10% in Poland. Generally, SMEs lag behind larger companies. Project-CONSIDERATION want to form a broad SB initiative by adapting knowledge and experience from the Social Fund project “”Digital Pathways to Growth”” (DVV), through which SMEs in Region Zealand (RZ) have got a boost in competency development if digitalization was part of their growth plan. More than 90 SMEs got such a boost building knowledge and competencies in digitization of companies’ administrative processes; use of data for collaboration across departments; automation of production and use of robots; digitization of the construction industry e.g. digital submission, drawing, 3D, or use of data in the design phase; digitization of sales, marketing and customer management. The DVV-project generated knowledge, experience, a competency language, concepts, and processes for competency development in SMEs. Still, many SMEs only had the capacity to take steps with low complexity. Compared to Danish regions, RZ as a rural region with no large cities lags behind in digitalization, due to a large proportion of SMEs. Compared to other SB regions RZ is ahead in people using internet daily, online banking and ordering goods and services online. The partners need seed money to share knowledge and experience from the DVV-project and adapt conceptions and processes to a broader SB initiative, to do desk research on SMEs in different SB target areas, organize a conference and have meetings with potentially more partners for a future regular project, and shape the project concept paper for the regular project.