Open up entrepreneurship Erasmus Project

Project Title

Open up entrepreneurship

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship); Open and distance learning

Project Summary

Internet and the WWW is changing our lives: the way we communicate, work, shop, socialise, play and educate. Digital technologies also reshape traditional industries and totally transform the business environment. They speed up and improve the way new innovative products and services are produced and accessed. ICT is also changing the very nature of consumption, competition and how markets operate. Taking a closer look at the European market, it is mainly comprised of SMEs which represent 99.8% of Europe’s enterprises with the typical EU enterprise to be a microenterprise with less than 10 employees. With the aid of technology, nowadays SMEs can become global from day one, reaching overseas markets. E-business and social media platforms allow companies to improve their international market presence and reach potential clients all over the world. In this line, new business models have emerged that have enabled young prospective entrepreneurs to turn their business aspirations into business ventures. Nevertheless, and in spite of the rapid growth due to the digital potential, European SMEs still lag behind in terms of ‘digital revolution’: only 1.7% of EU enterprises take full profit of the digital opportunities. Put simply, European existing and prospective entrepreneurs still have a long way to go before they capitalize the gains the digital area offers in terms of new product design and/or new means of promotion. The identification of this skill and training gap is the outcome of a past research collaboration between the lead partner IME GSEVEE and the University of Patras partner.The Open up Entrepreneurship (OpEn) project fills this identified knowledge gap where existing and prospective entrepreneurs seek for business solutions into the digital technologies but lack the skills and capabilities to exploit the vast potential of e-business models in the global market. OpEn project aims at exploiting innovative practices and technological tools to design and develop multi-disciplinary reusable Open Educational Resources for cultivating entrepreneurial mindset and economic thinking in the digital world. It aspires to provide the basic principles of international entrepreneurship from the perspective of e-business in order to acquire the necessary skills, competencies and capabilities for the exploitation of the opportunities offered by the digital economy through the design and implementation of an open E-module and laboratory. Such an open material addresses a diverse set of user training needs taking into consideration the training needs of existing enterprises and young highly educated prospective entrepreneurs (i.e. students). The project partners will develop innovative common multi-language e-modules that will be applied and evaluated by the consortium’s HEI and VET centers of social partners. However due to the open feature of the educational material, the related e-modules could be used to support young entrepreneurs throughout Europe.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 218515,8 Eur

Project Coordinator

INSTITUTE OF THE HELLENIC CONFEDERATION OF PROFESSIONALS CRAFTSMEN AND MERCHANTS AE & Country: EL

Project Partners

• PANEPISTIMIO PATRON
• ASOCIACION PARA LA GESTION DEL CENTRO EUROPEO DE EMPRESAS E INNOVACION DE BURGOS
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI BARI ALDO MORO
• THE MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY