The overall project objective is to strengthen the offer of professional services for entrepreneurs throughout Croatia through the networked business organisations, in order to provide integrated assistance to SMEs at all stages of development. The BOND project seeks to reduce disparities in the regions and facilitate access to business knowledge, skills and information crucial for business growth and development to all entrepreneurs in Croatia under equal conditions.
Within the project, a Network of Entrepreneurial Support Institutions has been developed, which currently brings together 58 business organisations from all over Croatia. During the project, the network was branded and, due to the international recognition of the project, the name BOND Network was chosen.
Based on an analysis of the services offered by the business organisations to entrepreneurs and analysis of entrepreneurs' needs for support by the business organisations, HAMAG-BICRO has tested five pilot services that the BOND network will offer to entrepreneurs, which will make their business more efficient.
The following pilot services have been established:

1. standardization of advising services for start-ups
2. decentralization of HAMAG-BICRO’s services through the business organisations
3. mentors’ network for entrepreneurs
4. support to business organisations in social entrepreneurship consulting
5. diagnostic tool for entrepreneurs’ innovation assessing

In addition to these pilot services, a free specialist training was conducted for all business organisations that are the members of the BOND network, which included the knowledge needed by every entrepreneur - from the organization of procurement, production, digital marketing, market research and consumer analysis to advanced financial reporting, managing a growing company, strategic business planning and business process improvement. In the first phase of the project, 20 specialist trainings were organized with the participation of 626 participants in three months.
Within the BOND project, the official website of the project was created https://bond-hrvatska.hr/ which also contains an educational and communication platform. The platform is a place for communication and exchange of experiences of the Network members and has an active role in the continuous education of business organisations’ employees. Educational content, presentations, videos, virtual trainings and the like are available on the platform.

Project duration: 28 months (01.07.2017 – 30.09.2019)