TALENT · Talent Attractiveness, A Competitive Edge For European SMEs

TALENT project is aiming at sharing experience and knowledge, but also challenges and issues to design best practices about Talent Attractiveness for the benefits of local SMEs, in a measurable and replicable manner. Because talent is one of the key resources for the SMEs, and for private companies in general, TALENT consortium of three European economic development and innovation agencies working respectively in Lyon (France), Berlin (Germany) and Rotterdam (The Netherlands) decides to assess what innovative measures shall be undertaken to support SMEs in their talent attractiveness effort.Gaining, keeping, and retaining talent is currently one of the highest priorities of business and more generally economies and their stakeholders. Hence, and because each territory is unique in its drivers and assets, peer-learning is the most valuable way to improve existing and create new dynamics for methodologies geared towards European SME communities. To reach the goals, the consortium will work in a dual collaborative mode: working as a group, and involving each relevant local stakeholders to contribute to the initiative, first of which the SMEs and their community leaders.The peer-learning process will be divided in three steps: (a) get an actual picture of the existing practices, needs and challenges in the three cities, Lyon, Berlin and Rotterdam, (b) improve and design methodologies to support SMEs’ challenges to attract talent, (c) finalize the Design Option Paper with generic approach for replication among other European regions. During the workshops organized in each step, definition, identification, targeting and attracting Talent will be on the agenda priority.The consortium is looking to identify best practices, applicable for any territory interested to investigate of the talent attraction dynamics, from the learning experience of each of the three territories.