SPECIAL FRACTIONAL & TRANSITION TOP MANAGER ON A PERMANENT BASIS SPECIFIC FOR STARTUPS AND INNOVATIVE SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES (SMEs)

Within the European Community Strategy for Growth, "Europe 2020", based on:

  • knowledge and innovation,
  • more resource efficiency,
  • being greener oriented,
  • being more competitive and promoting more employment,

adopted for:

  • tackling the economic crisis
  • to overcome the global challenges launched by the advance of technological innovation,

the discipline of Innovative Startups is born. This discipline, which was subsequently extended to Innovative SMEs, mainly provides for significant forms of financing in their favour, mostly in support of research and innovation.

Innovative startups have a dedicated framework in matters such as tax and financial benefits, administrative simplification, the labour market and bankruptcy law. A large part of these measures are also extended to innovative SMEs, that is to say to all small and medium-sized enterprises operating in the field of technological innovation, regardless of their date of incorporation or corporate purpose.

The number of Innovative Startups at the end of 2016 amounted to 6745, well over 1602 compared to 2015 (+23.8%). At the end on 2018 the estimate is of 9758 entities. Mostly concentrated in the centre north (especially Lombardy and Emilia Romagna) due to the presence of numerous incubators, characterized by founding teams mainly with technical and scientific training, Innovative Startups and SMEs need human resources with strategic Know-How and significant business experience in order to create, maintain and strengthen their competitiveness on the market in a sustainable way in the medium and long term:

  • Strategic Operational Finance and FinTech: Strategic Industrial Planning (Business Plan), relations with private and public financial institutions, extraordinary operations (M&A), stock option plans, Crowdfunding, Lend to Lend, Credit Exchange and other constantly evolving "instruments".
  • Operational Finance to better manage cash and the various "rounds" of raising capital, working capital, intangible assets (patents, inventions, investments with long-term benefits), maximize the added value of the many facilities (Facilitated Finance), manage debt, implement and make management control more efficient.
  • Management, Administration, Operations, Organization: implementation of processes to support and manage sustainable growth in the medium and long term (transition from prototype to large-scale production, supply chain, customers, suppliers, manufacturing, warehouse).
  • Information Communication and Technology: ERP and Business Intelligence, Web Digital Marketing.
  • Internationalisation: Very often innovative start-ups and SMEs cannot or do not feel like investing in Top Executives and/or Executives (both to concentrate funds in the development of the business idea and for psychological block reasons), depriving themselves voluntarily of strategic know-how, as they think of the simple cost instead of focusing and assessing the return on investment in the medium long term.

Innovative start-ups and SMEs are constantly experiencing extraordinary and evolving situations (strong growth, aggregations, revision of industrial plans, extraordinary operations such as transfer of shares to private equity, investment funds, quotations, generational switchovers, internationalization, need for new funds due to liquidity crisis, decrease in volumes and profitability, coverage phases of sudden and temporary managerial gaps) and therefore need specialized, experienced support and immediately operational in execution, maybe with  fixed term or only in a part-time formula.

To meet innovative start-ups and SMEs, IIMC Italy has introduced the program:

Special Transition Top Manager on a permanent basis specific for innovative start-ups and SMEs, which allows you to take advantage of the strategic and competitive know-how of Top Executives and/or Executives and their teams, with a low investment without losing the significant benefits in the medium and long term.

The Top Executive and/or Executive will share strategic know-how and high added value with the company owners and its management on a regular basis, usually between 2 to 4 times a month within a year. In this way you will benefit from the advantages of a Top Executive and/or Executive and his team, with varied experience as Chiefs Executive Officer (CEOs), Chiefs Operation Officer (COOs), Chiefs Finance Officer (CFOs) to Executives, in addition to the know-how of IIMC Italy and its international network. A high return investment, in a contained  amount and without fixed costs.

In addition, Top Executives are available for mixed and variable remunerations as well as evaluating direct investments in innovative startups and SMEs and thus sharing a good part of the risks with the entrepreneurial team.