Knowledge and skill needs and challenges of innovation ecosystems in the Central-Eastern and South-Eastern European space sector

The European space sector is on the rise, introducing a rapidly growing market with a lot of expanding opportunities for innovative space products, applications and services, even in non-space sectors. In order to exploit these opportunities, entrepreneurs need substantial business support, to build the knowledge and skills required to benefit from this erupting New Space era effectively.

This is even more intense in Central-Eastern (CE) and South-Eastern (SE) Europe, where only 30% of Europe’s space support innovation intermediaries are established. In this article, we investigate the knowledge and skill levels of innovation intermediaries that support innovators (i.e., start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs) of the SE and CE European space sector.

The study aims to identify: (i) the available competences and (ii) missing knowledge and skills of innovation intermediaries in the European space sector, investigating their skill levels from two main points of view: (a) the perception they have on their own knowledge and skill levels; and (b) the perception of innovators who have received business support services, with regard to the skill levels of innovation intermediaries. 

Authors: Chisiridis K, Malliopoulos G, Giagtzoglou K and Tsolakis AC.