About the Project

This project aims to boost the entrepreneurial performance of all consortium members in close collaboration with their ecosystem partners. We focus on improving and extending core entrepreneurial activities, at three different levels: students (entrepreneurship), faculty and researchers (founders, academic spin offs) and ecosystems (scale ups, open innovation). Complementary efforts and resources will be devoted to develop testbed infrastructures, comprehensive curricula and supportive material based on the EntreComp framework and developing and anchoring better practices by creating a learning community within and across the consortium’s ecosystems.

Within this project, we explicitly aim to increase the impact by improving and extending current practices and to lift the current knowledge triangle dynamics at a European scale in concert with relevant EIT KIC initiatives. In terms of goals (KPIs), we aim to:

• support (at least) 50 start and scale-ups,
• train over 1000+ students (including mentoring 150),
• train and mentor over 150 faculty/staff,
• to improve relevant support structures (n=20),
• and establish new partnerships, both locally and at the European Scale (n=10).

The project's main objective is to accelerate entrepreneurial and innovation capacity building at the HEIs. The ability of start-ups and existing companies to form strong teams is essential to achieve a trajectory of growth and innovation, enabling the successful commercialization of new inventions and scientific knowledge, critical to meet the new challenges of our society. For this, the project's results aim to enable students and young entrepreneurs to develop the skills and mind-set necessary to form strong teams for entrepreneurship and innovation in three main ways.

• First, offering specific training and education aiming at developing entrepreneurial and innovative skills and attitudes.
• Second, creating and integrating students and young entrepreneurs in a network and that promotes university-business collaborations.
• Third, guiding the entrepreneurial process, mainly developing the HEI Startup Guide.

In the long term, beyond the project's duration, these actions will encourage students in their professional life to undertake entrepreneurship and innovation through the creation of new ventures or within existing companies, fostering employment and regional growth.