AISAB

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Applied Innovation for Students and Business

The AISAB Project addresses the need within the EU to improve the level of innovation and its impact, particularly in SMEs. Building on the work of other innovation projects and materials, it will develop approaches to develop the skills that support SME innovation from an HEI context and through VET. These complementary streams of work will see implementation of initiatives to drive innovation, both during the project and also on a sustainable basis, by embedding the outcomes in the day-to-day activities of HEIs and organisations delivering VET to SMEs.

The project objectives are to develop learning materials aimed at enhancing student skills in assessing and implementing innovation, and build tools that students can use to facilitate their impact when consulting in SMEs. It will also develop a toolkit for SMEs to self-diagnose their innovation practice, as well as putting in place business intervention approaches that can be used to enhance innovation practices in SMEs.

Objectives

  • Develop a series of tools and techniques that leverage the work of previous projects, and established good practice, into a HE context for use with students to enhance their knowledge of innovation;
  • Create a handbook/process guide enabling HE students to work within SMEs to assess and develop innovation practice to enhance their skills in assessing and implementing innovation;
  • Design and develop a toolkit for SMEs to self-diagnose innovation practice and identify weaknesses;
  • Develop business intervention approaches to enhance innovation practices in SMEs;
  • Create case studies for use in a VET and HE context to support dissemination and exploitation of project results;
  • Write and present a research paper exploring reasons for weaknesses in the underlying culture and support infrastructure relating to innovation in SMEs.

Project duration

September 2017 till April 2020

Web

www.aisab.eu

Project partners

Universität Gloucestershire (England) – Koordination
Hafelekar Unternehmensberatung (Österreich)
PROMPT-H Bildungs GmbH (Ungarn)
Universität Sopron, Wirtschaftsfakultät (Ungarn)
Universität Primorska, Fakultät für Management (Slowenien)
Korona plus d.o.o., Ljubljana (Slowenien)
Fondazione Instituto Tecnico Superiore, Bergamo (Italien)
Universidad de Granada (Spanien)

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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

2inno

Do innovation now!

Innovation is frequently marketed as a driver of growth for the whole economy as well as the key issue for enterprises seeking to enhance their competitiveness. But why is it often so difficult for a business to successfully put innovation in to practice?

The principal reason is that it´s always a risk finding the right ideas, developing them into products and services before attempting a success launch into the market. If you run a small or medium sized business, you know that you must constantly renew but you do not always have the resources, the know-how or the willingness to take this risk.

2inno.eu has been developed to address this problem. The programme has been designed for the owner/manager or management teams of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and enables even the smallest businesses to introduce and implement practical innovation processes. The 2inno methodology – outlined below – has been jointly developed by 6 project partner institutions across Europe:-

A business that participates in the 2Inno programme will be assigned their own dedicated 2Inno coach. The business will participate in two inital ‘Innovation Audit‘ workshops at which an in-depth review of its competitiveness will be completed to determine how well positioned it is to respond to marketplace challenges and to develop appropriate solutions.

Following these workhops, innovative transfer projects will be defined, implemented and monitored. Short training modules will be delivered to key management personnel throughout the process. This provides the basis for the creation of an innovation strategy that will help build a long-term competitive advantage for the business.

Results

  • Multilingual innovation web-platform:
  • Toolbox ‘2inno innovation tools’
  • Training sessions in ‘Innovation Management‘

Project duration

October 2013 till September 2015

Web

Homepage: www.2inno.eu
Facebook: www.facebook.com/2inno/
Twitter: twitter.com/2innoeu

Project Partners

Hafelekar Unternehmensberatung – Innsbruck (Austria)
Instituto de Formación y Estudios Sociales – Madrid (Spain)
PROMPT-Ltd. – Gödöllő (Hungary)
Local Enterprise Office Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown (LEO DLR) – Dublin (Ireland)
Camporlecchio Educational Srl – Bergamo (Italy)
Institute for Innovation and Technology (Korona plus d.o.o.) – Ljubljana (Slovenia)

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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

e2-p

electronic entrepreneur portfolios

The general aim of e2-p is to widen access to existing web-based entrepreneurship learning through the use of ICT and to contribute to entrepreneurial (further) education & training.

The projects tool for creating ePortfolios (ProfilPASS) aims at assessing, keeping record and finally presenting someones individual abilities and skills. Users are being encouraged to reflect on their entrepreneurial skills they have acquired in different contexts, as well as to support the creation for their own educational biography.

The additional knowledge portal guides entrepreneurs by a process and topic based approach. Broad information is being made available and structured into the four entrepreneurial stages in order to provide the information required depending on the each users status within (1) business idea, (2) preparation/business plan, (3) foundation, (4) first steps as enterpriser. During each phase entrepreneurs are obliged to deal with different issues like market analysis, decide on a legal status, apply for a credit, etc. For each phase the relevant issues are discussed in the questions&answers. Additional to the process all information can be accessed by topics like finances, law, market, etc. The platform connects information within one environment that entrepreneurs usually need to collect from different sources. Finally the website operates as gate into the ePortfolio.

The combination of both solutions aims to support young people, especially graduates of vocational based education in the process of starting an own business in the tertiary sector successfully.

Project results

  • ePortfolios to support the preparation phase
  • Organization and implementation of trainings for mastercoaches for the use of ePortfolios.
  • Website for entrepreneurs
  • National reports

Project duration

October 2010 till September 2012

Project Partners

Hafelekar Unternehmensberatung – Innsbruck (Österreich) – Koordination
InterZone – Köln (Deutschland)
Helliwood media & education im fjs. e.V., – Berlin (Deutschland)
Centro Europeo de Empresas e Innovación – Albacete (Spanien)
Ballymum Job Centre – Dublin (Irland)
StudioCentroVeneto – Vicenza (Italien)
Academy of Management – Łódź (Polen)

Initiative. Female. Founders

Support for females setting up a business

This European project focuses on women who are disadvantaged regarding the labour market and therefore consider self-employment as possible job option. The aim is to facilitate women the access to business formations and to improve the general framework for female founders. Within the scope of this project guidance, training and supporting offers are developed and linked up with already existing institutions.

These offers open up new possibilities for women regarding self-employment and raise the chance for successul business formations. Development, consulting, qualification and networking are the main issue of this project. The comprehensive package INITIATIVE.FEMALE.FOUNDERS offers products out of 5 modules:

Module 1 – networking and target-group-specific reconditioning of numerous available resources (information, links, etc.) in shape of a knowledge map,
Modules 2 and 3 – Optimized consulting and qualification offers,
Module 4 – Facilitation of access to seed capital for the business formation (micro-credits),
Module 5 – access to business premises and infrastructure

The participating women can either take part in one of the modules or complete the whole support portfolio. For all women, who meet the criterias for self-employment, the development-partnership INITIATIVE.FEMALE.FOUNDERS creates supporting offers across multiple stages.

Results

Carrying out of a qualitative study with female company founders and young entrepreneuses
Development of a networked knowledge-map (CD-ROM and online) – plattform for female company founders
Creation and publication of a brochure for company founders: „Being a female company founder – becoming an entrepreneuse“. Questions, answers, hints, addresses

Project duration

October 2005 till September 2007

Funding

Supported by funds from the European Social Fund (ESF) and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture

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