“Our country has received much money to support clusters but nothing efficient enough to keep in place. In the training we learnt how we, as public sector, can dialogue with companies in a local environment, understand their problems and challenges, and help them increase their competitiveness.”

“Lately, a lot of public funding has been granted in Bulgaria, specially from the European Commission, to create structures and committees likely to foster competitiveness and innovation. Once the money is burnt everything stops. That is not sustainable. On the contrary, through the Foundation’s training programme, we get actionable knowledge, and acquire the right mindset. This capacity building effort empowers the local economic development teams to do their job better.”

“We’ve been doing researches and studies on competitiveness and innovation for years; all of them are now sitting on a shelf in some office. The training programme of the Foundation, specially the field project, gave us the tools we needed. Together with our local expertise, that makes a powerful setting to concretely support local companies.”