For Entrepreneuriel Mindsets Link

Building entrepreneurial competence is a key EU policy objective. It is a feature of the Strategic Framework for Education and Training and an element of many recent policy documents including the Green Paper on Entrepreneurship in Europe (EC, 2003), the Small Business Act for Europe (EC, 2008), the Communication on Rethinking Education (EC, 2012), the Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2020 (EC, 2013) and the New Skills Agenda for Europe (EC, 2016). The Council Recommendation on Key Competences (EC, 2018), confirms the importance of “promoting entrepreneurial mindsets” and encourages Member States to think about “nurturing entrepreneurship competence, creativity and the sense of initiative especially among young people”. ForEMLink seeks to address some of these policy imperatives by developing an approach that will offer relevant and practical learning to students in higher and advanced vocational education, increasing their entrepreneurship skills and helping them to start viable businesses. ForEMLink brings together five organisations for whom inspiring entrepreneurial mindsets is a common challenge. Through sharing their knowledge and expertise and working together the five partners will develop three concrete intellectual outputs: • ForEMLink Methodology: this aims to define and describe an approach to co-creation that may be adopted by educators in HEIs to deliver curricula in entrepreneurship (01); • ForEMLink Digital Platform: brings together educators, students and enterprises and provides a matchmaking service, enabling the latter (enterprises) to upload genuine, real-life problems that students will be able to access and attempt to solve as part of their learning (O2); • ForEMLink Handbook: developed using direct inputs from educators and students having made active use of the ForEMLink Digital Platform and/or participated in one of the transnational learning, teaching and training events; this will be an output that serves to support future users of the ForEMLink Methodology and/or Digital Platform as well as acting as an aide-memoire for existing users (O3). All three intellectual outputs will be developed through joint working by the five partner institutions supplemented by appropriate consultation with and inputs from enterprises, students and educators using the two core outputs of the project (methodology; digital platform). Consequently, transnational cooperation is not merely a necessary component of this cooperative approach but also a key feature of the targeted methodology and digital platform. A further tangible output centres on the two learning, teaching and training events, one aimed at educators (C1) and one aimed at students in higher education (C2). These will be attended by participants from all five partner countries and will generate input for the ForEMLink Handbook.

Intangible outputs include an increased level of competence and usage of the developed digital resource (digital platform) among educators at the five institutions, increased confidence and competence among students, particularly those aiming to launch their own businesses and increases in the birth rate, and survival rate, of businesses in the five partner regions and countries.