CREATE (Connecting Rural Enterprise for A Transnational Economy) has been awarded European Funding through the INTERREG IVB North West Europe programme to develop and pilot best practice techniques to encourage small rural SMEs to take up and optimise NGA broadband and advanced ICT and to collaborate with other small rural businesses from across North West Europe.

CREATE looks to overcome the barriers to growth & competitiveness experienced by SMEs in the predominantly rural areas of North West Europe. These barriers include geographic isolation, lack of infrastructure, lack of scale, poor clustering opportunities & critically, lack of ICT expertise. Next Generation Access broadband (NGA) & advanced ICT have the potential to overcome these barriers and transform the productivity of rural SMEs. 

CREATE joins a group of like-minded organisations spanning public sector authorities, private sector representative groups and business development agencies from France, the UK, Ireland and Belgium who share the aspiration of encouraging the economic development of their regions.