About Futures By Design
Futures By Design helps SMEs in rural areas of the North Sea region to use data analyses to innovate, grow and increase productivity.
Futures By Design (FBD) aims to enable small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in regions of lower economic success to innovate, grow and increase productivity. SMEs are critical to regional economies and contribute considerably to regional employment. However, their capacity for success can be limited by insufficient access to data and the inability to analyse data to drive innovation and obtain improved results.
The six project regions are: Cambridgeshire (UK), Antwerp (B), Groningen (NL), Osterholz and North-West Germany (DE), Halland (SE) and Fryslan (NL). Each has a sub-region of lower economic success. Futures By Design will mainly address the industry sectors health technology, light engineering and agri-technology, which are represented in each region and all have a clear SME demand for supporting growth through better data - e.g. data about finance, legal changes, markets and technologies. This will help SMEs to develop strategies how to respond to technology shifts, data analytics and disruptive change.
We will work with 50+ SMEs in each partner region, sharing knowledge, ideas and regional experiences to support SMEs to become more data-driven and better informed about the economic, technological, policy and supply chain changes that will shape their futures.
We will create a virtual transnational horizon-scanning and knowledge transfer (HSKT) hub connecting 6 real hubs (one in each region) to support sustainable SME growth, innovation and productivity. Amongst our target 300+ SMEs we expect to enable 150 to grow, innovate, increase productivity and 150 (many the same SMEs, but not all) to make a major step to being better equipped for the digital age, and for future success.