Creative Voucher Scheme — Slovakia's Innovation Vouchers for Creative-Sector SMEs

Between 2018 and 2020, the Slovak Innovation and Energy Agency (SIEA) ran a national scheme, financed by the EU's Operational Programme Research and Innovation under de minimis rules, offering SMEs creative vouchers worth roughly €1,000-€5,000 (up to €10,000 for architectural services) to redeem for design, marketing, architecture or software services, covering up to half the project cost.

SIEA issued 424 vouchers to 237 service providers out of 2,001 proposals from 1,587 providers, paying out €1.73 million to entrepreneurs in 2018-2019. An independent academic evaluation matched 72 beneficiary firms and 37 provider firms to comparable unsuccessful applicants using difference-in-differences with propensity-score matching: supported providers' assets grew 2.04x and sales 2.64x between the 2016-17 baseline and 2019, against 1.31x and 1.37x for the matched control group. The study is candid about its limits — a one-year post-intervention window (COVID-19 prevented extending it), a small beneficiary sample, and only modest, statistically insignificant gains for voucher recipients themselves versus unsuccessful applicants; the strongest measured effect was on the service-provider side of the market.