The EU Interreg Central Baltic-financed project named Archipelago Business Development (ABD) started in the fall 2016 and ended in September 2019. The project aimed at knowledge sharing and creation, business model and partnership development across borders, as well as new start-up business formation and support in the archipelago regions of Southwest Finland, Åland Islands and Stockholm. The goal was to recruit 60 companies, develop 10 new business models among existing companies and support five new start-up companies. This report will summarize key activities that have been realized during the entire project period and evaluate the overall performance. The aim is to offer insights and lessons learned from the different activities in order to provide general future development suggestions for different stakeholders.

The project was led by Novia University of Applied Sciences (Novia UAS, Turku, Finland). The other project partners were Åbo Akademi University (ÅAU, Turku, Finland), Södertörns Högskola (SH, Stockholm, Sweden) and Drivhuset Norden (Drivhuset, Stockholm, Göteborg & Örebro, Sweden).  Each partner had the main responsibility for different work packages (WPs). This report is part of WP3, which was led by ÅAU. However, cross-border collaboration has been at the very core of all project activities and the insights presented here are based on extensive work done by all four partner organizations.

All project activities have been evaluated by the participating entrepreneurs. A midterm evaluation survey was conducted in the summer of 2018, and a final evaluation survey and some complementary interviews with archipelago entrepreneurs were conducted in May 2019. These constitute the basis for this report. In addition, evaluations and lessons learned from the project partner perspective are based on discussions held throughout the entire project period, particularly during the final stage of the project.