Representatives of business incubators from across Serbia gathered at the inspiring Mokrin House estate to attend workshops whose goal was to improve the operations of their organizations. Workshops were part of an intensive capacity building program realized within the project: “European Union Support for Business Incubators Development – EUBID”. Participants had the opportunity to take part in interactive workshops and gain knowledge about the importance of networking, product and service development, as well as presentation to investors.

Since its founding, Nova Iskra has been sharing its knowledge and experience with related organizations, hubs and business incubators with the aim of empowering representatives of their teams to create high-quality services and programs for their respective clients and users.

Within this project, Nova Iskra implemented an intensive two-day training program for business incubator managers on the topic Networking and development of local ecosystem to support self-employment of various target groups, with the idea of ​​supporting the development of the Serbian innovation and startup ecosystem.

Having in mind the specific role of hubs, which innovative ecosystems recognize as places that bring together representatives of the private, public and the civil sector but also representatives of the local community and academy through their activities and programs, networking is understood as one of the key roles of business incubators.

This training focused on the importance of understanding the needs of users within the local context, as well as the importance of a strategic approach to networking – on the national, regional or international level. The training mapped-out the potentials of incubators that were participating, and presented good practice examples on different levels of networking. Networking activities contribute to increasing the number of tenants within coworking spaces, the number of users of pre-incubation and incubation programs created by business incubators, as well as the number of associates who come from different sectors.