The AccEnt project aims to boost the entrepreneurial performance of all consortium members in close collaboration with their ecosystem partners. The project focuses on improving and extending core entrepreneurial activities at three different levels: students (entrepreneurship); faculty and researchers (founders, academic spin offs); and ecosystems (scale-ups, open innovation).

Complementary efforts and resources will be devoted to developing testbed infrastructures, comprehensive curricula and supportive material based on the EntreComp framework, as well as to developing and anchoring better practices by creating a learning community within and across the consortium’s ecosystems.

As such, the consortium consists of a variety of complementary higher education institutions (HEIs) situated across Europe:

• Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (coordinator) (Greece);
• Fontys University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands);
• KU Leuven (Belgium);
• Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (Poland);
• Pablo de Olavide University (Spain);
• Thomas More (Belgium);
• University of Macerata (Italy);
• Odesa I.I.Mechnikov National University (Ukraine);
• Lutsk National Technical University (Ukraine).

To achieve specific targets towards knowledge triangle dynamics, the project is backed up by IDEAS Forward (Greece), a strategic valorisation partner of AUTH. The variety of competences, practices and target groups present within the consortium will guarantee that the development of the activities and their outcomes will be transferable, not only within each partner institute, but also to bear relevance and create impact across Europe.

Backed up by senior management of all the involved partners (who all have been involved in the HEI self-assessment and the development of the joint Innovation Vision Action Plan underlying this proposal), as well as relevant ecosystem partners, AccEnt’s goals and philosophy are built on the belief of the relevance of third mission activities of universities (knowledge triangle) for Europe’s knowledge society today and tomorrow, as well as the growing importance of inter and transdisciplinary (valorisation) activities, and the potential of operating systematically on a European scale.

All partners are actively pursuing synergies and collaborations within their own ecosystem (knowledge triangle) to create impact with their valorisation activities. AccEnt aims to increase the impact by improving and extending current practices, and to lift the current knowledge triangle dynamics at a European scale with relevant initiatives of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology and the Knowledge and Innovation Communities.

In terms of goals, the project aims to support at least 50 start and scale-ups, train over 1 000 students (including mentoring 150), train and mentor over 150 faculty/staff, improve 20 relevant support structures, and establish 10 new partnerships, both locally and at a European scale.

AccEnt is confident that it can make a significant difference in terms of accelerating innovation and entrepreneurial excellence in HEIs across Europe.

Project coordinator

Stratos Stylianidis, Vice Rector for Research and Lifelong Learning, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (contact)