| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The strategy is developed on long period programmatic lines; the identification of thematic areas and operational priorities has been studied with the emphasis on a strong market orientation and the competitiveness of enterprises (topic). The strategy consistently involves employment policies, training and sustainable development of the territory, also in order to ensure synergies amongst the investments supported by European Structural and Investment (ESI) funds. The strategy is drawn up by referring to the concept of "functional over-urban areas", defined as system actions aimed to the development of this area, with specific focus on the need to introduce shared planning systems.
The strategy was implemented both by extending the network of stakeholders, both by ensuring synergy between the investments made by the European structural funds.
The municipality has established the “Development and Opportunities Department” that can both intercept the european, national and regional funds, both to support the social innovation in the field of self-employment and employment, having a role of "Advisor" as concerning the processes of exchange of knowledge and information between stakeholders of the network.
The municipality has signed Memorandum of understanding and agreements with the stakeholders involved, promoting an active role of the subjects in the implementation of specific actions and identifying, for each of them, specific roles.
The municipality of Pesaro prepared an integrated urban development strategy that was able to tackle the multiple challenges facing the city, in order to prepare this integrated strategy, the municipality used the Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities (RFSC) which is a practical web-based tool designed to assist cities in this regard.
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The strategy implementation uses a collaborative model that aims to build ecosystems of integrated innovation in which the results of innovation are determined from interactions between key actors (academic, institutional and business) and in which the maximization of the skills of the network and the optimization of their effectiveness are critical successfull factors.
The project Re-Start Pesaro works in synergy with the most important institutions of the territory: chambers of commerce, agencies for internationalization, training and consultancy company, local authorities in the productive district, incubators and business start-up, Marche Region, the province of Pesaro and Urbino, the Hospital Company “North Marche”, banks and credit institutions, trade unions, trade associations, representatives of the third sector, embassies, ICE office (Foreign Trade Institute), economic development Ministry, European Commission.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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The project Re-Start Pesaro is implemented through the development and Opportunities Department of the Municipality of Pesaro: the human resources are both internal and external (cooperative system, Chamber of Commerce, other local authorities) who collaborate in different ways, both with specific skills and sharing animation projects and promotion of the economic territorial entrepreneurship, co-founded by EU funds (ERDF, ESF and Cohesion Fund), ministerial and regional founds.
In particular, The Integrated Territorial Investment (ITI) named “Pesaro-Fano cities” provides a new delivery mode to bundle funding from several priority axes of one or more operational programmes for multi-dimensional and cross-sectoral interventions. This ITI supports integrated actions in urban areas combineing funds linked to different thematic objectives, including the combination of funding from those priority axes and operational programmes supported by the ERDF, ESF and Cohesion Fund .
The financial resources provided for by the ITI are included in the programming documents for the Marche Regione (regional operational program), while the other initiatives provide the mobilization of funds linked to a new approaches of finding them (fund raising, crowdfunding,...).
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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The most successfull outputs are:
- no local taxes (contributions) for new entrepreneurship
- Incentives for the creation of employment through project training
- Incentives for placement of the unemployed
- Strengthening and Institutionalisation of the network dedicated to entrepreneurial and social innovation
- Creation of the municipal “Development and Opportunities Department” in order to support the creation of a new business and projects of social innovation
- implementation of the project ITI named “Pesaro- Fano cities”
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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Activities related to the delivery of structural funds are monitored and evaluated following the EU rules, and are coordinated by the “Development and Opportunities Department” of the Municipality of Pesaro.
The activity of Monitoring provides information on the evolution of the state of implementation of the project Re-Start Pesaro through qualitative and quantitative indicators.
The progress of the activities and the level of achievement of outputs will be measured principally through these indicators:
- the level of increasing employment of the territory following the implementation of the project
- the number of new incubators born in the period 2013-2017
- the number of stakeholders involved and the level of involvement in the initiatives
- the number and type of training and informative events carried on
- number of projects actived with co-founded resources
- the level of customer satisfaction
Such information are the basis for annual reports and strategic local reporting, and will be used by administrators to process any improvement strategies or make changes following the feedback received.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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The main obstacles encountered were:
- Lack of visions of growth due to the economic crisis
- unemployment increasing
- Difficulty of generational replacement in enterprises
- Difficulties in promoting processes of entrepreneurial
- Managerial level of smes not commensurate with the new challenges on competitiveness
- Need to requalify the functional urban area (composed by two municipalaities, Pesaro and Fano) in which there are two common) from the urban point of view, technological and employment
These obstacles were overcome through:
- Support the development of the territory through a specific office named “Development and Opportunities Department”
- measures to promote employment increasing and formative training
- targeted training courses to the generational replacement
- no local tax for new entrepreneurship
- Flanking the temporary manager and training courses
- co-funding of an ITI (UE approach) for “pesaro and Fano cities” in order to requalify the functional urban area in its urban, technological and employment aspects
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