Introduction

The Alps are a strong economic area in Europe covering a number of enterprises and clusters with high innovation potential and top performance regarding sustainable development. At the moment, sustainable development is still focussing too much on the environmental sector. Improving all three aspects – economic, social and ecological – of sustainable development in the Alps is highly depending on a better involvement of Alpine core economic sectors. The SMEs are those who create and save jobs in the Alps, and competitiveness of the Alpine SMEs in a tougher worldwide market finally is a matter of
innovation!
The little use of the existing innovation potentials is often caused by lacking manpower, networking and market-orientation and by lacking strategies and ideas how to mobilise co-operation synergies within and between the different economic sectors. This weakens the competitiveness of enterprises, clusters and the Alpine economy as a whole compared to other European regions.

Project Aims

NENA intends to act on the above problems, to boost selected core economies and to build an Alpine-wide network of and for SMEs. By strengthening clusters and co-operations between urban and rural areas NENA wants to help to attenuate the increasing polarisation between strong urban areas in the valley floors and less favoured and declining areas. NENA intends to build an Alpine-wide network of SMEs. The exchange of know-how, the initiation of co-operations, the offer of training as well as image enhancing measures for SMEs are the tasks of this network. NENA will contribute to a better use of existing co-operation potentials by mobilising synergies within and between the different economic sectors.