Many higher education institutions (HEIs) in Europe are struggling to capitalise on their research infrastructure capacities and opportunities; leverage HEIs’ accumulated scientific knowledge for co-creation with stakeholders; prepare students for entrepreneurial thinking and actions; and establish effective dialogue with industry and government due to lower readiness level and different motivational drivers and expectations.

InterHEI is an initiative of a pan-European consortium of four forward-thinking HEIs and four actors from other sides of the knowledge triangle. InterHEI aims to tackle the aforementioned challenges by leveraging the existing innovation and entrepreneurial knowledge of all the partners and by drawing on the resources of HEInnovate to boost the sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship of the higher education sector across Europe. Consequently, this will boost sustainable economic growth and competitiveness in the EU.

InterHEI focuses on building capacity for innovation across HEIs in the area of food and health, enabling them to provide socially responsible and sustainable innovative solutions and entrepreneurial ideas that could transform the food and health system into a more sustainable, resilient and trusted system. This area has been assessed as a key strength of the consortium and is essential for businesses and government institutions as it will:

• strengthen the innovation ecosystems in respective sectors;
• increase the number of research-based spin-offs and start-ups relevant to the contemporary food and health systems;
• diversify HEI revenue streams and create jobs;
• increase success rates of new product launches;
• contribute to smart specialisation strategies and mission-oriented research and innovation policy implementation.

The project will also benefit from an alignment with the goals of EIT Food and EIT Health, and its outcomes will support the strategic aims of these Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs).

Building upon HEInnovate results, the project relies on an integrated set of initiatives related to the four domains and six actions of the HEI Initiative, namely:

• Research infrastructure commercialisation academy;
• New product development labs;
• Youth entrepreneurship programme;
• Insight Academy.

Through building capacity, which is designed and tailored to develop innovation and enterprise, these initiatives support the development of academic and non-academic staff, and students within HEIs across the consortium, EIT HEIs, the EIT Knowledge and Innovation Communities, and society. Sustainability is achieved through open resources and shared tools. This enables stakeholders for transformative change beyond project lifetime, as well as the Train the Trainers method, which ensures exponential growth of academic and non-academic expertise and skills to support capacity building of innovative and entrepreneurial scientists, researchers, staff and students to effect great societal innovation.

Project coordinator

Mansour Esmaeil Zaei, Faculty of Management, University of Warsaw (contact)

Project website

InterHEI