The project concerns support services to existing and start-up businesses in the Municipality of Athens for the improvement of their competitiveness and their comparative self-assessment, aiming at the creation of new businesses and the improvement of the operation of existing ones, especially in the areas of regional smart specialization. The project will develop a set of quality criteria and a self-assessment tool specific to the sectors of interest with 20 questionnaires and pilot application of the criteria in selected enterprises

The aim of the project is the design, creation and operation of an integrated network of structures for the promotion and support of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Peloponnese Region.

Specifically, LIEE  undertakes the implementation of three (3) studies.

Furthermore, the LIEE will provide scientific support in all the Phases of the Project and in particular in the staffing of the Evaluation Committees of the innovation competitions and hackathons, in the process of diagnostic needs of business models, as well as in the thematic content of the actions.

This is a two-year research project will investigate the participation of Greece in global value chains (GVCs) at different levels (country, sector, firm), focusing on the underlying role of knowledge flows and innovation development as determinants of the country’s catching-up in terms of structural competitiveness in global markets and leveraging globalization as a growth strategy.

The project has four main objectives:

• To map Greece’s participation in GVCs, providing a rich set of participation indicators at the sector and country level.
• To study the participation incentives, integration strategy and expected benefits at the firm level, through a large-scale survey on selected sectors.
• To investigate the nexus of GVC participation, innovation performance and international competitiveness at the sector and firm level and unveil the underlying structural mechanisms that facilitate or hinder it.
• To provide evidence-driven policy recommendations and inform Greece’s relevant research, technology, and innovation (RTI) policy interventions.

The project will inform Greece’s Smart Specialization (S3) and future RTI strategies, focusing on three main pillars that these strategies aim to facilitate, namely globalization, growth, and competitiveness. The project treats these pillars as an interconnected triangle, where the main challenge is how to leverage globalization as a strategy for growth and competitiveness, through knowledge diffusion and innovation development in GVCs. In particular, the project aims to provide conceptual and empirical insights on the GVC-related dimensions of this triangle, which are rather underexplored for the Greek economy case.

The project’s objectives are expected to address the following challenges:

• Investigate and identify the benefits of participation in GVCs at the sector and firm level.
• Examine whether GVC participation holds innovation and growth potential for Greek firms and sectors.
• Understand how GVCs interact with the Greek national Innovation System (IS) and the ways GVC participation can enhance and upgrade the country’s innovation capabilities.
• Address Greece’s catching-up in terms of integration and competitiveness in global markets.
• Highlight the pervasive structural weaknesses that hinder the catch-up process and the potential comparative advantages that may facilitate it.
• Inform the country’s GVC participation strategy through a coherent and integrated set of policy and managerial recommendations.

• 14th Panhellenic Conference of Chemical Engineering

Results from WP2 were presented in poster form in the 14th Panhellenic Conference of Chemical Engineering, held in 29-31 May 2024 in Thessaloniki, with 500
participants:

A full paper (Dimas, P., Stamopoulos, D., Panagiotopoulos, P., Protogerou, A. (2024), “Mapping the participation of Greece in global value chains” ) was included in the conference proceedings.

Additionally, a shorter investigation (Stamopoulos, D., Dimas, P., Tsakanikas, A. (2024), “Μeasuring regional participation in global value chains") into the participation of Europe's regions in global value chains was presented  and discussed with conference participants.

• 36th Annual EAEPE Conference

A working paper (Stamopoulos, D., Dimas, P., and Protogerou, A. (2024), “Participation and Positioning of Greek Sectors in Global Value Chains and Evolution of Their Trade Patterns’’) on the roles of Greece in the GVC network was presented in the 36th Annual EAEPE Conference, held in Bilbao (Spain) in September 2024. 

• Researchers’ Night 2024

The GRinGVCs team was in LIEE's kiosk with a poster presentation in this year's Researchers’ Night on 27 September 2024 at “Averof” building in the historical Patission building
complex, with the attendance of more than 2000 people, discussing the project's aims and objectives with interested member of the wider public. 

The project includes a series of studies for the research and scientific support of the Consortium “SYDNA BUSINESS SUPPORT CENTRE” and in particular studies for: (a) the market conditions and developments and trends in the area of competence of SYDNA (Kallithea, Alimos, Paleo Faliro); (b) a study of employment prospects in the three municipalities; (c) a study to identify the sectors of the local economy that have potential for extroversion; and (d) business discovery, business and environmental mentoring and extroversion promotion actions for the enterprises of the area.

The aim of the project is to quantify the contribution of the manufacturing sector to the economy of the Region of Central Greece and the country as a whole (direct, indirect and induced effects) in terms of GDP, employment and public revenues, as well as to highlight the main challenges and prospects for the further development of the sector in Central Greece. It will also assess the main challenges of manufacturing in Central Greece (e.g. economic activities of the Region with growth potential, factors contributing to the strengthening of industrial activity), as well as the main obstacles faced by enterprises and the proposed interventions.