Stuttgart Region
The Wirtschaftsförderung Region Stuttgart GmbH (WRS) is a subsidiary of the Verband Region Stuttgart aiming to meet the Verband’s responsibility for regional business promotion and was founded in August 1995. It is partly financed by the Verband Region Stuttgart and by own business activity. Programmes are aligned inwards as well as outwards, so that local business are given the prospect of development as well as the location being made known and attractive to inward investment. According to the articles of the Verband Region Stuttgart association (governmental status), the WRS has the mandate of attracting interested companies to settle in the Stuttgart region and to support them during all the phases of their investments, to support also companies already present in the planning and execution of their market activities and to carry out strategic projects to foster the regional economy with the main focus on SME's. The operating structure of WRS is defined in accordance with the needs of the Stuttgart Region and has therefore three operational departments: Location Marketing, Regional Development & Promotion of Innovation and Procurement of Location.
The main approach of WRS to promote R&D and Innovation in SME's activities combines promotion via dialogue, facilitating access to subsidies, improvement of regional knowledge management, workshops for continuing education as well as financial support for technical innovations. As an instrument in terms of an Applied Regional Innovation Strategy, WRS plays an active role in the development of Regional Competence and Innovation Centres. They support network creation and provide an instrument for economic development, which assists especially SME's to meet the challenges of global competition. Competence and innovation Centres provide support to SME's by linking them to large companies, as well as to regional research and education facilities and thus connecting them to regional knowledge pools. They are a contact point for national and international cooperation projects. Stuttgart Region has supported the formation of Regional Competence and Innovation Centres with a 2 million Euro contribution programme as a finance base for the first 4 years. After this period Competence Centres running innovation projects are financially supported through a budget of 250,000 Euro annually. This approach aims to foster the innovative ability of regional SME's.
