The EU-LAC Digital Accelerator is an initiative financed under the Neighborhood, Development & International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI-Global Europe) in the framework of the EU-LAC Digital Alliance, focused on fostering multi-stakeholder and private sector collaboration, competitiveness, digital skills and innovation, through the establishment of a regional EU-LAC Digital Accelerator.
The EU-LAC Digital Accelerator works as a multi-sided platform connecting business opportunities from corporates with innovative startups and SMEs between the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean. The initiative is formed by 10 organisations distributed in these 2 continents consolidating 1 strong team.
Do you want to know who is involved? Do not miss our ‘Meet the Team’!
Today we are interviewing Mr. Rubén Carrandi, Senior Project Leader at EBN.
Look what he told us in this short video and read more details of our talks in the article!
Hi Rubén, can you tell us about your position at EBN?
I work as a Senior Project Leader at EBN, and my main activities are linked to international project development for EBN and our members, the EU|BIC Community. Therefore, I work on the one hand in screening opportunities for projects from international donors for EBN and the EU|BIC Community, identifying funding programmes, calls for proposals and tenders of interest; also in the engineering part, building the consortia and preparing the proposals to be submitted to respond to international calls; and finally, I work as a Project Manager implementing the projects when we get them.
We would like to know more about your organisation, what are you focused on and what is your field of expertise?
EBN, the European Business and Innovation Centre Network, is the pan-European association of quality-certified business support organisations (BSOs). We are a network of 165 members, most of them located in Europe but also beyond, in countries like Canada, Egypt, Lebanon, Argentina or China.
Our members are business incubators and accelerators, science and technology parks, Universities, regional and national development agencies, companies and other organisations working to support innovative entrepreneurship.
EBN provides its members with a portfolio of services that includes capacity building activities on key topics to better support entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs; networking opportunities to promote best practice sharing, transferability and joint collaborations; support to take part in international projects funded by EU initiatives but also by other donors in and outside Europe; and a monitoring and evaluation framework to continuously assess the quality of the services provided to entrepreneurs, together with the EU|BIC label, the only quality certification for business support organisations.
Now, how is this linked to the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator? Can you explain the role you envision to play at this meaningful project?
The EU-LAC Digital Accelerator is totally aligned with the core activities and the priorities of EBN.
Our activities within the project are mainly linked to the creation and engagement of a network of trusted business incubators and accelerators working in the initiative, in order to disseminate the opportunities provided by the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator to their mature stat-ups and innovative SMEs that would like to collaborate with the participating corporates and setting long-term partnerships with them.
We will first identify business incubators and accelerators outside our network, mainly in Latin America and the Caribbean, and we will establish connections with them, trying to set-up win-win long-term collaborations. For this, a series of services will be provided to the business incubators and accelerators, including the granting of the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator Seal for BSOs.
EBN members will work together with other business support organisations that we will identify and approach during the project, to then identify, find and support entrepreneurs with a series of acceleration services to consolidate their joint-ventures with the corporates.
What are the main actions/activities you are working/will work on in the project that you are most excited about?
The possibility to provide EBN members with opportunities for their start-ups and SMEs to enlarge their portfolio of clients by engaging with corporates is of utmost importance for us within this project.
Also, the opportunity to get in touch with new business incubators and accelerators beyond our network will give us the possibility to make new contacts that for sure will be useful for our members, looking to find partners in other regions to collaborate, for example, to provide internationalisation support for start-ups, like joint soft-landing activities, among others.
Finally, the possibility for the EU|BIC Community to provide the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator joint-ventures with acceleration services will also help them to expand their experience and the geographical scope of their activities, learning from an exciting journey together with very strong partners.
At the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator, what is the positive impact you hope to generate?
We are convinced that, with the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator, we will be able to support the establishment and consolidation of strong partnerships between companies in Europe in Latin America and the Caribbean. SMEs and start-ups will be able to expand their network of clients connecting with international corporates, who will find a reliable partner to solve their digitalisation challenges thanks to the project.
And at the same time, we will be able to foster connections between business support organisations that are part of EBN, and other business incubators and accelerators that we will work with during the project, also contributing to create long-lasting partnership at the BSOs level connecting both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
What do you think are the biggest challenges to boosting digital cooperation between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean? And the keys to solve them?
There are several challenges to boosting digital cooperation between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. Digital connectivity, the digital divide or the data protection and regulation can be some of them; however, they are already being tackled by initiatives such as the EU-LAC Digital Alliance, that was launched in March 2023 and with whom the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator is closely connected.
Within this framework, companies can for sure be drivers to boost digital cooperation between both sides of the ocean. Corporates having a need for digital transformation need to find digital enablers, agile and innovative companies able to provide them with specific digitalisation solutions. Bridges to connect both sides of the market -the need for digitalisation and the providers of the digital solutions to those needs- and both sides of the ocean will be for sure a catalyser of digital transformation and collaboration between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. The role of business support organisations is essential for this, and initiatives like the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator are of utmost importance to comply with this key mission.
Do you have previous experience managing European projects? What is the most rewarding thing about it?
Along my seventeen years of work experience, I’ve had the occasion to take part in and manage several EU projects. The opportunity to interact with very diverse partners working at different levels, and the impact these projects have in different groups of beneficiaries, is for sure what I find definitely the most rewarding.
To conclude, how would you describe the EU-LAC Digital Accelerator in one sentence?
The EU-LAC Digital Accelerator is a real bridge promoting collaboration between organisations from Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean.
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