With the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement, the world agreed for the first time in history to act decisively and tackle the two most important challenges for humanity today: achieving sustainable development and addressing the problem of climate change. In addition, since March 2020, the situation of the entire world economy has been strongly affected by COVID-19. This poses important challenges for production models and social habits as well as concern about well-being and health.

Within this context, HEI4Future aims to carry out a set of activities to reinforce teaching in the field of emerging skills associated with sustainability and mitigation of climate change. The project also aims to make new proposals for manufacturing, advanced mobility, and health and nutrition to reduce the mismatch between supply and demand. HEI4Future aims to do this by designing and creating new programmes that address in a new, innovative and multi-disciplinary way the needs of higher education in these fields. This provides a key holistic approach to the emergence of initiatives and the development of entrepreneurial mindsets in the EU.

The main objective of this project is to propose a model of open innovation in the educational field to stimulate interactions and intersections of key productive systems in the European area with sustainability: advanced mobility, health and nutrition, manufacturing, etc.

In addition, the project will work on providing entrepreneurial skills to the teaching and support staff of participating institutions. HEI4Future will also improve the organisation of the institutions themselves, so that they can face in a more agile and effective way the new challenges posed by today’s society, which is increasingly concerned about the effects of climate change on the environment.

HEI4Future focuses on entrepreneurship and innovation capabilities, digitisation, sustainability, the introduction of design processes, open innovation and soft skills. These are all connected with the field of sustainability and climate change and rely on different productive ecosystems with a focus on close contact with the productive sector. The idea would be to convert technological capabilities into new skills to generate new products and services.

To this end, HEI4Future includes a wide range of actions aimed at:

• identifying the gap between the needs of the productive fabric and the project’s training proposal;
• designing more agile training models and content to support entrepreneurship and innovation;
• promoting entrepreneurship;
• supporting new business projects that may arise in HEIs;
• creating communities of practice to boost the flow of university−business communication;
• workshops for building work teams;
• direct support through networks of mentors;
• a mobility programme to promote synergies and relationships between teams of entrepreneurs.

Project coordinator

Pablo Cabanelas Lorenzo, Universidade de Vigo (contact)

Project website

hei4future.eu