PROFIS aims at developing new capacities and capabilities in the SEE region to facilitate early stage funding of innovative projects of both individual inventors and spin-off or start-up companies. New services will be developed, introduced and tested at non-profit intermediary organisations which are active in the field of innovation promotion at regional level. The project will provide a state of the art analysis of existing funding opportunities in all participating countries and make a cross-country analysis. These documents will be validated at national and international levels, and may serve partly the purpose of other tasks in the project and policy makers in improving the applied measures and introduce new ones in facilitating private investment in innovation. The project will identify the actual market demand for new services (based on a dialogue with both inventors and investors) and map the available servicing capacities in order to identify the areas for further improvement or new developments. Human capacities for providing new services will be developed by intensive training activities and partly through twinning programmes. Special attention will be given to the promotion female innovators. The services will be developed in 9 regions in SEE via an integrated process of national and SEE regional innovation competition. 3 innovative project winners at national level and 5 at SEE level will be selected and awarded, while the service providers (not only the project partners, but other interested intermediary organisations) will test their new capacities. Key results of the project: 28 organisations with improved capacities in supporting early stage funding of innovation, 135 projects prepared for early stage funding, 10 policy papers at national and SEE levels on improving innovation funding measures, introduction of a new platform for bridging inventors in SEE and local and global investors, and awareness building on the promotion of female inventors. Achievements: The Profis project prepared in 2014 a Summary report on European good practice on promoting female innovators.The report states that no common or consistent definition of women innovators/inventors exists in the literature. Inventors may generally be defined as those who create the original idea or product; innovators more generally are recognised for their ability to make a better idea or version from the original or find new arenas for application.In most of the 14 Member States there is some information available outlining a range of specific challenges and obstacles faced by innovative women in setting up, running and expanding a business, including within the science and technology sectors. The nature and type of challenges faced are consistent across Member States and may be classified under three main headings – contextual obstacles, economic obstacles and soft obstacles.Research findings confirm that at the national level• GDP growth and the development of social safety nets have a positive effect on the amount of opportunity-driven entrepreneurship.• Necessity-driven entrepreneurship declines with the growth of other options in the labour market. This result has been found in SEE countries.• Effective entrepreneurship programmes are nationally tailored to fit the national contexts (and cultural and social features are considerations). This result has also been found in SEE countries.The full report here can be found under: summary_report_on_european_good_practice_on_facilitating_female_inventors.pdf