As part of CREW’s EU Spotlight series, we’re exploring the opportunities, knowledge and connections emerging through our European projects and international collaborations, and what these experiences can bring back to creative entrepreneurs and the wider ecosystem here in the West and North West of Ireland.
Last month, that journey took us from Galway to Copenhagen for the Creative Business Cup Global Finals at TechBBQ, bringing together creative start-ups, investors, ecosystem builders, accelerators and innovation organisations from across Europe and beyond.
For CREW, the value of participating in CBC is felt well beyond the competition itself. It is an opportunity to connect Irish creative businesses with a much wider European ecosystem, to understand how other regions are supporting ambitious start-ups, and to strengthen the relationships that can help Irish creative businesses access new markets, knowledge and opportunities.
From a European project to a global platform
CREW’s involvement in the Creative Business Cup grew out of our partnership in the SPECTRA project, which ran from 2023–2025.
SPECTRA (Stimulating Performance of Ecosystems in Creative Territories and Regional Actors), led by the Western Development Commission and funded through Horizon Europe, brought together partners from Ireland, Denmark, Germany and Bulgaria to explore how regions can strengthen their innovation ecosystems through collaboration, knowledge exchange and international connections.
A central idea within the project was that strong ecosystems do not develop in isolation. They are built through relationships between entrepreneurs, support organisations, investors, education, industry and public bodies, as well as through collaboration between regions.
That thinking has influenced how CREW approaches internationalisation today. Rather than seeing European engagement as something separate from our work supporting creative businesses in Ireland, we see it as part of the infrastructure that can help those businesses grow.
The Creative Business Cup is a good example of this in practice. CREW has now supported Ireland’s participation in the Creative Business Cup for three consecutive years, working in partnership with the Western Development Commission and the Creative Business Network in Denmark.
In 2024, Grá Chocolates represented Ireland at the Global Finals. In 2025, Starilum went on to achieve third place globally. This year, JunieXR, founded by Grace Dinan, represented Ireland with JunieStream, an accessibility solution bringing sign language interpretation, adaptive captions and interactive viewing features directly into streaming platforms.
Over the past three years, we’ve seen the impact of this opportunity grow well beyond the competition stage. The pitch, recognition and results provide an important platform for Irish creative businesses, opening the door to a much wider network of relationships, conversations and possibilities.
The value continues in what happens around the competition: conversations that lead to collaborations, ideas exchanged, shared experiences between creative start-ups, and the opportunity to see how businesses and support organisations are approaching similar challenges in different markets.
Looking beyond Ireland and beyond the pitch
The Creative Business Cup brings together creative entrepreneurs from more than 60 countries, creating an unusual opportunity for founders to meet businesses working in very different markets and creative sectors. For an Irish start-up, that can mean encountering a potential partner, customer, mentor, investor or collaborator who may not otherwise be accessible through a local network.
This exchange also brings new perspectives on what is possible. For creative businesses, stepping into an international environment like CBC provides a different lens on how their proposition is understood outside Ireland, and who else might be interested in what they are building.
At this year’s Global Finals, the Irish delegation also had the opportunity to participate in the wider TechBBQ programme in Copenhagen. TechBBQ brought together thousands of founders, investors, industry leaders and researchers, with more than 10,000 attendees and over 1,700 investors reported for the 2026 event.
While the Irish start-ups participated in intensive pitch training alongside their global colleagues, CREW took part in matchmaking events and showcases that allowed us to develop our own network among innovative digital creative ecosystems. We met organisations running incubation and acceleration programmes, working with universities and research institutions, and contributing to policy development across the sector.
These conversations are particularly valuable because many of the questions facing creative ecosystems are shared across borders.
- How do we connect creative businesses with investment, and how can we better articulate the investment potential of the creative industries?
- How do we make sure creative businesses are part of wider technology and innovation ecosystems rather than operating in a separate silo?
- And how do we build the relationships that make international collaboration easier for entrepreneurs and start-ups?
There is no single European model that answers these questions. There is, however, significant value in being able to compare approaches, share what is working, understand where challenges are similar, and identify opportunities for joined-up action.
What this means for Irish creative businesses
For CREW, the lesson from CBC and our wider European engagement is that internationalisation needs to start before a company is ready to export. It starts with exposure and meeting people outside your region. It means understanding how other markets work and developing relationships before you need them. And it means helping founders see their business as part of a much larger ecosystem.
Many digital creative businesses are inherently international. A game, piece of software, immersive experience, digital platform, animation or creative technology product can potentially reach customers anywhere in the world. A key part of CREW’s strategic role is to help create the pathways that connect Irish start-ups to those wider opportunities, whether through the Creative Business Cup, European projects, international mentorship, exchange programmes, delegations or the relationships we build with other ecosystem organisations.
Importantly, that exchange works in both directions.
Bringing the learning home
CREW is not only travelling to learn from other ecosystems; we are also contributing the experience and expertise being developed here in the West and North West of Ireland. SPECTRA helped strengthen relationships between ecosystem organisations across Europe. Our Interreg Europe work continues to create opportunities for peer learning between regions. And programmes such as the Creative Business Cup provide a direct route for those wider networks to better understand and connect with the innovative start-ups in Ireland.
The impact of European collaboration is not measured only by a single event, a pitch or a prize. It is also seen in the relationships that continue afterwards and the opportunities that come from fostering those relationships, the knowledge and case studies that find their way back into our programmes, and the new possibilities that become accessible to Irish creative businesses.
For us, that is the practical value of building a more connected European creative ecosystem: there are stronger routes for good ideas, ambitious businesses and the people behind them to go further.
