Quarterly Progress Report for the Period October – December 2014: Partnership for Innovation Activity

The project also seeks to strengthen small and medium enterprise (SME) competitiveness and productivity by increasing SMEs' effective use of value-added ICT and their ability to offer new, high value-added ICT products and services that respond to market demand. The project will achieve these objectives by supporting training, internship, mentorship, private sector engagement, and SME competitiveness strengthening initiatives. The project approach is demand-driven, with programs designed or modified based on market analysis and direct feedback from SMEs and educational partners. The project creates valuable forums and processes that will ensure there are sufficient incentives for all stakeholders to carry out these forums and processes long after the project has been completed. The PI interventions are targeting ICT sector SMEs and SMEs in other sectors that use ICT for their core operations. The project is concentrating on four major geographic areas with flourishing business, secondary school, and university activities - Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Tuzla, and Mostar. All PI activities respond effectively to two target markets: SMEs and young market entrants, particularly university students, out-of-work university graduates, and out-of-school secondary school graduates. During the reporting period of October through December 2014, the PI executed 4 advanced ICT trainings and bootcamps in Sarajevo, Tuzla, and Mostar for 76 participants from 31 SMEs. Two of these bootcamps were the first-ever such type trainings in Bosnia Herzegovina, focusing on the Apple Inc.'s programming language, Swift. The PI also executed 1 advanced ICT training in iOS software application development for 14 ICT skilled unemployed youth from Sarajevo. In addition, the PI completed 3 training program design workshops in Tuzla, Banja Luka, and Mostar that were focused on upcoming training priorities. Several key areas were identified, including Swift/iOS, ASP.NET, Node.js, and Angular JS as highest priorities for the competitiveness of local SMEs focused on software development. The project's interventions are expected to achieve nationwide impact and contribute to the US Foreign Assistance Framework Objective for Economic Growth in Program Area 4.6 "Private Sector Competitiveness" focusing primarily on the Program Element 4.6.2 "Private Sector Productivity."