HGC Academy – High Growth Companies Academy

In Hungary there are 1.1 million businesses and 0.5 million< companies registered on court. When businesses were selected that have min.5% growth in net sales, export turnover and staff, owned by Hungarian persons, and have min.10 employees from the manufacturing sector of the convergent regions, then we end up with 150 companies. Another challenge is that 25 billion EUR in 2007-2013, and 20 billion EUR in 2014-2020 were allocated and spent for development, and the competitiveness level of Hungary went down on international rankings. All allocation of subsidies was based on the system of open calls. Based on these two phenomena such an intention was outlined by policy makers, that a partnership approach should be applied in distribution of funds, reinforced by focus on medium-sized sector. It led to the High-Growth-Companies (HGC) program.
The program consists of the following elements: thematic workshops, on-the-job mentoring, international study tours, digitalization training, communication materials, subsidy program (entire development). Each element is linked to the previous one. It started with 2.000 companies, and 46 are selected in the final stage.
The main stakeholders were Ministry of Innovation and Technology (EDIOP), IFKA Public Benefit Non-Profit Ltd.(management), international consortium (implementation: PBN-HU, BizUp-AT, InnoAG-DE). Further stakeholders were Ministry of Finance, Hungarian Intellectual Property Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.