Networking Opportunity for West Midlands SME Companies

A consortium involving the City of Stoke-on-Trent Council, the Business Innovation Centre and the Universities of Staffordshire and Keele are developing a database as part of a European project entitled "DRIVE" (Directing Research Into Viable Enterprise). The project aims to connect the West Midlands with regions in South West Ireland, South East Ireland and Stuttgart Germany through the creation of a database listing regional SMEs and research performers. The sophisticated software not only logs details of companies and their areas of expertise, it automatically identifies links between partners likely to have areas of common interest and encourages them to get in touch. These linkages can be to companies both within and outside the West Midlands area. Equally, linkages could be business to business or business to research group. The electronic linking process continues as a function of time as fresh company details are added to the database. Whilst any company can have their details added, the focus of the database is to establish fresh links between organisations involved in:

• Medical Technologies
• ICT
• Creative Industries

[January 2007]