The project harnesses the collective expertise of leading Deep Tech innovation hubs, Research institutions, Incubators, Accelerators, testbeds, and networks, aligning closely with the New European Innovation Agenda (NEIA) to amplify our impact on a regional and national scale. By strategically utilising the limited financial resources, we aim to magnify the effect of existing significant assets, joining European regions to provide a single market for scale-up support and acceleration and empowering scale-up founders to tackle the most pressing sustainability challenges in global cities and communities.

ACCEND builds shared understanding and trust between the project partners by collaboratively designing joint, distributed cross-border Scaleup Accelerator Services that build on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of each partner and their regional ecosystems. It runs an ACCEND Accelerator pilot programme engaging over 100+ startups and delivering accelerator services to 100+ scale-up companies, providing access to regional services and funding mechanisms and opening global markets for these entrepreneurs. The pilot aims to validate a sustainable model for deploying cross-border Deep Tech acceleration services.