1. 1/18
Leveraging SMEs’ Strenght
for INSPIRE
Glenn Vancauwenberghe
(KU Leuven SADL)
Piergiorgio Cipriano
(EC JRC)
Contributors:
Giacomo Martirano (Epsilon Italia)
Elena Roglia (EC JRC)
Danny Vandenbroucke (KU Leuven SADL)
INSPIRE Conference
Firenze, June 27th 2013

2. 2/18
key questions
1. What is the size of the Geo-ICT sector in Europe? How many Small
and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)? And how big is the market?
2. What are the main characteristics of these Geo-ICT companies? And
what are their core activities?
3. How is the Geo-ICT sector currently involved in the implementation
of INSPIRE?
4. Do Geo-ICT sector companies in Europe have the skills and
knowledge to participate in the implementation of INSPIRE?
5. Does INSPIRE already have an impact on the innovative performance
of Geo-ICT companies in Europe?

3. 3/18smeSpire project
 Rationale of smeSpire project (May 2012 – April 2014):
SMEs can enable countries to fulfill the INSPIRE Directive,
creating new market opportunities with increased potential for
innovation and new jobs.
 Objective of the project:
“to encourage and enable the participation of SMEs in the
mechanisms of harmonizing and making geodata available.”
 Activities:
1. STUDY : Assess the market potential for SMEs
2. TRAINING: Develop a multilingual training package
3. BEST PRACTICES: Collect and exploit a BP Catalogue
4. TRANSFER: Create a network capable of transferring result-
driven knowledge throughout Europe

4. 4/18smeSpire study

5. 5/18
source: EC-JRC, 2007, Mapping the ICT in EU Regions
http://ipts.jrc.ec.europa.eu/publications/pub.cfm?id=1554
ICT SMEs in Europe
ICT SMEs 480,000 (Eurostat, 2009)
“micro” (< 10empl.) 90%
Total turnover 400bln€
Employees: 2.9 million
smeSpire estimation:
up to 2% of ICT SMEs dealing with GI

6. 6/18
Geo-ICT SMEs in Europe
source: http://www.smespire.eu/map/smes/map.html
Employees
“small” (< 50 empl.) 90%
“micro” (<10 empl.) 60%
Turnover
< 1 mil € 75%
< 500.000 € 58%
Group
16 % is part of an enterprise group

7. 7/18year of foundation
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
%ofcompaniesfounded-peryear
a: Oracle (1978), dbf (1979)
b: ArcInfo, AutoCAD (1982), MapInfo (1985)
c: www (1990), Mosaic browser (1993)
d: US Ex.Order 12906, OGC (1994), ArcView 1, Java (1995), shapefile , Mapquest (1996)
e: OSM (2004), GoogleMaps, PostGIS (2005), OpenLayers (2006)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
Cumulative%ofcompanies
Timeline
a b
c
d
e

8. 8/18activities & customers
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
Education
Implementation of network services
General IT consultancy
Data modeling
Transformation of spatial data
Development of client applications
Use of spatial data
all activities primary activity
Customers?
• Public sector as the main customer for most companies (60%)
• Public authorities at local/regional/national level in their own country

9. 9/18knowledge of INSPIRE
Current awareness of INSPIRE
“Well, ... yes, I have heard”
31%
69%
No
Yes

10. 10/18knowledge of INSPIRE
Knowledge in the organization of INSPIRE and INSPIRE regulation
• Knowledge of general objectives and principles is high
• Regulations about “Data” and “Network services” are less known
Objectives
Main Principles
Conceptual Framework
Metadata regulation
Data and Service regulation
Network Services regulation
Interoperability of spatial data sets and…
Monitoring and reporting obligations regulation
5.0
1.8
2.1
1.4
1.4
2.5
3.2
6.4
18.1
18.5
21.7
20.3
19.9
18.9
16.7
22.1
45.9
44.5
36.3
35.6
35.2
31.0
35.2
23.8
Very low / low Average High / very high

11. 11/18INSPIRE involvement
Current involvement in INSPIRE
Only 1/3 of participant companies is directly involved in INSPIRE activities:
• most of them as a contractor of public authorities
• some of them as member of interest communities or expert in thematic
working groups
34%
66%
Yes
No

12. 12/18INSPIRE involvement
Current development of INSPIRE compliant components (%)
• Companies mainly involved in development of view services and data
modeling (both 26%) and metadata catalogue (21%)
• Lowest involvement is on schema transformation (9.6%)
26.0
16.4
21.0
16.0
26.0
17.1
15.3
9.6
12.1
16.4

13. 13/18impact of INSPIRE
Changes already occurred and/or foreseen due to INSPIRE Directive
• impact of INSPIRE already quite high, and expected to increase in future
• current impact related to introduction of new products/services
• future impact related to new products/services and new customers
Introduction of new or significantly improved
products/services
New or significantly improved methods of
producing products/services
Delivery of products/services to new customer
groups/geographic markets
Delivery of products/services in less time or
lower cost
42.0
33.5
31.7
28.1
73.7
67.3
71.9
66.2
Foreseen Occurred

14. 14/18barriers to innovation
Lack of funds within your enterprise or group
Lack of finance from sources outside your enterprise
Innovation costs too high
Lack of qualified personnel
Lack of information on technology
Difficulty in finding cooperation partners for innovation
Market dominated by established enterprises
Uncertain demand for innovative products or services
23.1
19.9
35.9
25.6
20.3
31.0
24.9
31.3
27.8
30.2
23.1
19.6
10.3
21.7
28.8
35.2
13.2
13.9
5.7
2.8
2.5
5.0
18.5
9.6
Average High Very high
Barriers that hinder or prevent innovation
• Main barrier: dominance of market by established enterprises
• Several barriers related to financial aspects
• Internal and external barriers

15. 15/18
34%
66%
Yes
No
R&D and innovation projects
EU co-funded research
Only 1/3 of participant companies was involved in co-funded R&D projects in 2011:
• 65% of them in 7th Framework Programme (FP7)
• 23% of them with co-funded annual budget lower than 10K€
• 10% of them with co-funded annual budget between 100K€ and 500K€

16. 16/18R&D and innovation projects
FP7 projects (all topics)
In the period 2007-2012 there were:
• 18,000 projects founded
• more than 40,000 participant organizations
• 31bln€ funded by EU
FP7 projects dealing with GI
~200 projects with direct focus on Geographic Information:
• search on Cordis web site: “inspire” or “geoss” or “gmes” or “spatial” or “geo”
• more than 1,000 participants
• 482mln€
• 381 EU27 cities involved
SMEs difficulties
Very hard for SMEs to participate in EU-funded projects:
• barriers in creating or entering a consortium and make proposals
• advance payments are very low
• Percentage of SMEs’ funded budget is very low (14% of total*)
* smeSpire elaboration on ICT FP7 projects only (http://open-data.europa.eu/en/data/dataset/ict-research-projects-under-eu-fp7)

17. 17/18R&D and innovation activities
FP7 projects regarding “Geoinformation”: lines represent connections between partners involved
(colour and width measure the amount of EC funding received from by each city-partner from each city-coordinator)

18. 18/18thank you!
 Questions, comments?
 Want to participate?
 smeSpire study:
• JRC: Piergiorgio Cipriano, Max Craglia, Elena Roglia, Paul Smits
• KU Leuven: Glenn Vancauwenberghe, Danny Vandenbroucke
 smeSpire project:
• Coordinator: Giacomo Martirano (Epsilon Italia)
• www.smespire.eu
• @smespire
• smespire