Crowdfunding in sustainable innovation: Insights from and for Cyprus

The take up of innovative services and products has contributed to creative thinking also in terms of new sources of financing. Innovation processes are characterised by constant development, and it is beneficial if models of financing can be aligned to that. Crowdfunding, i.e. collecting finance from publics, has emerged as a new alternative also in the field of sustainable innovation. Crowdfunding is particularly interesting for Small and Medium size companies (SME’s) looking for financing when their product or service is not considered quite ready for investments. This policy brief looks how crowdfunding relates to sustainable innovation. It introduces crowdfunding as an activity, discusses it in relation to sustainable innovation and looks at the development of crowdfunding in Cyprus. This policy brief looks at crowdfunding from several levels: a strategic, programmatic and case level. Concerning Cyprus attention should be paid to the fact that there is no crowdfunding policy. In Cyprus there is a lack of gathered and easy to find and access about funding information, both Regional and European. Currently, people such as interested businesses and individuals are not being easily and on-time informed about any available funding schemes and about the open calls, as well as they don’t have a direct access to the application or/and to relevant material for the funding scheme. This results in people having difficulties to apply for funding.