15 December, 2025

BEACon - Business Excellence through Atlantic Cooperation: Improving SME success rates by equipping business advisors with an evidence-based, practice-ready toolkit.

The BEACon project (Business Excellence through Atlantic Cooperation), funded by the Interreg Atlantic Area Programme, held its first transnational project meeting in Cluster GAIA’s headquarters on December 11th -12th, 2025. BEACon, with partners in Ireland, France, Portugal, and the Basque Country, aims to enhance success rates through an evidence-based toolkit for business advisors.

Over the course of the two-day meeting, partners focused on Work Package 1: Needs Analysis of Innovation-Driven Enterprises and Evaluation Planning, which had just started in October and will come to an end in late April 2026. Participants evaluated the organisational needs and had the opportunity to experience a sharing collaborative session with a hands-on workshop using the Miro effective tool in order to create a strategy map. A brief introduction to Work Package 2 also took place regarding the Toolkit Development and Small-Scale Pilot Testing.

Hosted by Cluster GAIA, the meeting featured presentations from Basque stakeholders, such as Activities and Challenges of the Portlab offered by the Bilbao Port Innovation and Research Centre, and Strategic Plan of the Blue Economy by the Basque Maritime Forum.

Eskerrik asko Cluster GAIA!

The next phase of the project, WP2, will start in April 2026 and will end in November, and, as mentioned above, is aimed at developing a toolkit and small-scale pilot testing.

If you would like to learn more about the BEACon project, visit the project page on our website at index.cfm/page/beacon- or visit the project website at https://www.atlanticarea.eu/discover-our-projects/approved-projects/beacon.

Dune Iriarte Iriondo

Hincks Global Training Intern 2025-26

Disclaimer: This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.