The RUBIZMO project has been studying the success factors of rural entrepreneurship in term of innovative business models, emerging value chains and collaborative initiatives. However, an essential aspect of successful rural businesses comes from outside the business itself. We call it the business environment.

A supportive business environment aims to support innovative and emerging businesses to overcome the challenges they may face. The results show that the development of a conducive business environment for emerging and innovative business cases in rural areas are the coordinated effort of key stakeholders including public agencies, clusters & networks, research organisations, entrepreneurs, and other civil society organizations.

The collaboration enables the access to funding, resources, infrastructure, essential knowledge, and technology needed for businesses in rural areas. It also enables coordinating lobby activities for reforms on rules and regulations. One of the key activities is awareness creation among the consumers and public agencies is found to be one of the important factors to create a conducive business environment on different sub-arenas.

Within the business environment tool, the RUBIZMO consortium developed a workshop structure with supporting material including a comprehensive definition of the business environment. Guidance instructions on how to conduct the workshop is available for interested actors who would like to find local and specific solutions to overcome the challenges in their business environment. The workshop also afforded the opportunity to bring relevant stakeholders at the local level together and give a platform to discuss the barriers and potential solutions in the business environments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15e27Le-VeY&feature=youtu.be

The partners in RUBIZMO produced different types of master class modules for existing and future (emerging) rural entrepreneurs that provides necessary skills (economic, legal, staff, finance, leadership, collaboration & networking etc.) for establishing and developing an enterprise through a sustainable business model. The classes were held in very different contexts and for different target groups.

To enable a continued use of these modules and the material therein, RUBIZMO dedicated a section of the RUBIZMO website as a Training section. The main target group for this section are the advisors and intermediaries who train or coach entrepreneurs as their daily mission. The material can also be used by entrepreneurs and students.

In the training section, different types of training material are made available, on different topics and in different languages. There are videos explaining the different modules of the Business Model Canvas, making use of the cases presented in the virtual library, as well as the animated videos produced during the RUBIZMO project. There is also direct access to these videos on the RUBIZMO YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeGdHMLDEA-XiBqy53spFxQ



You can find training material in form of PowerPoints which were used in different training situations around Europe, and which are free to use. In the section you can also find recordings from the Café Talk series which include several important topics to reach a sustainable business model: https://rubizmo.eu/e-learning

RUBIZMO has created a publicly available tool for displaying networks and clusters with a great degree of information.

While most EU network information databases sort the networks into a few categories, the RUBIZMO Network tool has created a filter based on six different categories: country, sector, focus, typology, impact, and cooperation, each one differentiated into several sub-categories.



The filters are offered in a motivating approach, supporting the selection through country maps, matrix features and drop-down category selections. The filter is the base for a three-step selection procedure which allows to (1) concentrate on a selected group of networks of interest, (2) compare a subset in more detail, and (3) identify in a final step a network of choice.



For supporting network development, the tool includes a feature that supports interested groups in selecting (1) an appropriate network organization, (2) suitable management concepts and (3) the services the network intends to provide to its members.

The network tool is supposed to grow and offers templates for adding networks to the tool. It is accessible through: https://www.biobased-networks.eu/

RUBIZMO has created a publicly available tool for analysing business models, identifying gaps and needs, and highlighting paths for transforming the business models in a desirable direction. In addition to the 47 business cases added to the tool, RUBIZMO has made it possible for entrepreneurs to add their own business cases/models, which can be used privately or submitted to the public business cases/models so all can use them.



The transformation support tool aims at supporting discussions between advisors and entrepreneurs in gaining ideas about innovative business opportunities:



- about their potential impact on regional development and business success,

- about their implementation requirements regarding the business environment and available business resources and strengths,

- about a company’s abilities or deficiencies in meeting the requirements to implement a new business model,

- and about potential actions for overcoming existing deficiencies.

For being able to adjust the tool to different environments and business needs as well as to newly emerging information, knowledge, or regulations, the tool allows advisors to extend the database and to adjust the analytical features and advisory proposals to changing business scenarios.

The tool is providing a comprehensive support for solving the problems facing rural advisors and entrepreneurs: https://www.rural-businessinnovation.eu/service.php

The RUBIZMO project developed a guidance document targeting investors, innovation intermediaries, and policy makers, to support the development of regional hot spots for rural business success. In that sense, the report analysed six practical examples of hotspots for rural business success selected in different countries, to identify best practices and key factors for the development of similar hot spots supporting rural entrepreneurship across Europe.



The key factors necessary to attract new entrepreneurs in rural areas can be summarised as follows: access to the means of production (i.e. land or livestock), ability to establish a supply chain, access to market, but also to workforce, including skilled workers, as well as availability of adequate financing, technologies, infrastructures and knowledge.



As already concluded by RUBIZMO partners, the creation of rural hot spots for business success is strongly linked to the development of supportive and adaptable business environments, providing the right incentives to attract entrepreneurs in rural areas. More information on business environments can be found in Practice Abstract 9.

The virtual library is the first business support tool launched by the RUBIZMO project. The objective of the tool is to provide inspiration to rural actors and mainly rural entrepreneurs to support the replication of new business ideas across Europe. Inspiring business ideas selected and analysed by RUBIZMO partners are featured on the library, together with examples of replicable business strategies. You can navigate through the virtual library easily, either by screening through the thumbnails, or by using the tool’s advanced search function.



The search function allows you to apply one or several filters to obtain a selection of matching business ideas and business strategies. These filters include the sector (i.e. tourism, aquaculture, or biofuel), the country of origin of the business idea, your type of organisation (i.e. entrepreneur, research centre, policy maker), and the type of innovation you are looking for (i.e. new technology, new collaboration model, new product or service, etc.), as well as a free search function to look for specific words in the library. If you would like to know more about a specific business idea or business strategy, you can click on the thumbnail to get more details.



For practical business examples, you will find there some background information on the company, including its main activities and markets, the amount and source of funding that was necessary to start the business, as well as key challenges and advice for other related businesses. The content of the virtual library will be updated regularly in the coming months, and will feature over 50 business ideas and provide examples of replicable business strategies. The virtual library is available at the following link: https://rubizmo.eu/business/virtual-library

Collaboration offers many opportunities for economic development in rural areas. Reasons pushing actors to collaborate with each other can be multiple: share resources to reduce costs, access new markets thanks to local partners, or exchange knowledge and good practices. Existing collaborative structures include several types of business networks, to train or connect businesses, support the exchange of best practices, drive joint investments, or integrate existing supply chains, as well as business clusters, gathering different types of actors in the same region willing to work together on a specific topic.



To facilitate the creation of clusters and networks, the first step is to define the objectives of the collaboration, by identifying the challenges laying ahead, and the opportunities that could be offered by collaboration. Then, you need to carefully select your partners, making sure that they have a similar understanding of the situation, and similar goals, to reduce the risks of conflicts during the collaboration.



Finally, you have to decide which form of collaboration you would like to adopt, including the form of leadership, but also the way to handle IPR, the origin and amount of resources allocated, and the geographical location. The main success factors will rely on the context in which the network or cluster is created, and the adequation between the choice of partners and their objectives.



Trust between partners, ability to adapt and solve conflicts, joint planning, good participation, and communication, as well as availability of relevant knowledge and technology are proven to foster successful collaboration. The role of catalysts and facilitators, including advisors, is also critical to foster networking in rural areas.

To foster the replication of innovative business models in rural areas, the RUBIZMO project first established a database of related projects and initiatives previously funded by European and national programmes that could have led to the creation of inspiring rural business models. For the European programmes H2020, FP7, LIFE and EUREKA, RUBIZMO partner Zabala used its BUSCO tool to create a database of projects based on the use of relevant keywords (Rural, Bioproduct, Bio-Based, Bioeconomy, (Agro)Forestry, Agrofood, Tourism/Recreation and Infrastructure).



The mapping of Interreg and national partners was split across partners depending on the country of origin. This led to the creation of a database of 400 rural initiatives. This database will be made available on the RUBIZMO project website at https://rubizmo.eu/publications.



The public version of the database will include the title and short summary of the project, start and end-date, budget, source of funding and coordinating organisation. Private initiatives were added to this list based on partners’ knowledge to increase the scope of the analysis. To select the most promising business ideas, RUBIZMO partners designed a dedicated Evaluation sheet. A first round of interviews with rural project’s coordinators was conducted by RUBIZMO partners, using this Evaluation sheet to organise and rank rural business ideas. Information collected covered key preconditions needed for the development of the business, novelty of the business idea, replicability and upscaling potential, as well as economic, social, and environmental impact of the project. Over the 137 businesses interviewed, RUBIZMO partners selected 57 business ideas that have been further analysed by the project.

In the first months of the RUBIZMO project, partners reviewed existing literature and EU policies related to rural entrepreneurship to outline emerging opportunities for the development of modern rural areas and identify practical solutions to achieve that objective. The first opportunity identified by RUBIZMO partners is the use of new technologies, and in particular information and communication technologies, to reduce the distance in sales and marketing and provide relevant platforms to improve logistics and knowledge exchange. The second type of opportunity laying ahead in rural areas is the development of a bio-based industry with a strong rural base to support long term growth and job creation through the use of renewable resources.



Finally, the valorisation of ecosystem services could be supported by the increasing interest of urban population in touristic activities linked to nature and rural environments, fostering the development of new business opportunities. As these emerging opportunities are primarily based on disruptive innovations, their implementation relies heavily on newly established enterprises, able to link up with the research sector to facilitate technology transfer and engage in networking activities to foster knowledge exchange and create new value chains connecting markets with their customers.



But beyond these factors, the successful uptake of these opportunities relies on the ability of policy makers to develop favourable business environments, providing the necessary infrastructures but also financial and advisory support for the new companies taking up the challenge of investing in disruptive innovations.