CONFEDERAZIONE NAZIONALE DELL ARTIGIANATO E DELLA PICCOLA E MEDIA IMPRESA

Their core work

CNA Lombardia is the Lombardy regional branch of Italy's largest confederation representing artisans, craftspeople, and small-to-medium enterprises. Their core activity in H2020 was delivering innovation coaching and Key Account Management (KAM) services to help SMEs access EU funding instruments, particularly the SME Instrument and Fast Track to Innovation. They act as an intermediary between European innovation programmes and the dense SME ecosystem of northern Italy, translating EU opportunities into practical business support for small companies.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

CNA Lombardia's focus has been remarkably consistent across their H2020 participation: all four projects are successive editions of the same KAMINLER initiative. The early period (2015-2018) emphasized technology transfer alongside innovation coaching, while later editions (2019-2021) broadened the instrument portfolio to include FET-Open and Fast Track to Innovation. This suggests a widening of the EU funding programmes they support rather than a fundamental shift in their role.

They are expanding the range of EU innovation instruments they coach SMEs on, moving beyond SME Instrument into FET-Open and Fast Track to Innovation.

How they like to work

CNA Lombardia operates exclusively as a participant, never leading projects. Their collaboration is highly concentrated — all four projects share the same KAMINLER consortium, and they have worked with partners from only one country. This indicates a stable, regionally anchored partnership rather than a broad European networking approach.

Their network is narrow but stable: 12 consortium partners, all within a single country (Italy). This reflects their role as a regional SME support body embedded in the northern Italian innovation ecosystem rather than a pan-European operator.

What sets them apart

CNA Lombardia brings direct access to one of Europe's densest SME ecosystems — Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna together represent a massive concentration of manufacturing and artisan businesses. For consortium builders, their value lies not in research capability but in their ground-level reach to thousands of small companies that could benefit from or adopt project results. They are a dissemination and SME engagement partner, not a technology developer.

Highlights from their portfolio

• KAMINLER (2020-2021)
  Final and largest-funded edition (EUR 47,835) of their recurring KAM initiative, representing the most mature version of their SME coaching model.
• KAMINLER (2015-2016)
  First edition that established their role in EU innovation support, explicitly including technology transfer — a focus area that narrowed in later editions.