‘No business is too big to fail or too small to be successful’. This Brian Solis’s sentence highlights the evolutionary process that makes obsolete and uncompetitive those businesses that are not able to grasp the change. Adaptive capacity becomes essential in the evolution of the businesses, especially for SMEs.Education and training are key drivers in the process of spreading a stronger culture of entrepreneurship in Europe. It is considered as having the potential to contribute to the building of entrepreneurial mindsets among the young citizens of Europe, to an increase in the rates of business start-up survival, as well as to more growth and innovation in SMEs, and hence to contribute to the growth of employment opportunities in the medium term.Nowadays, assistance to SMEs and start ups takes the form of traditional services such as coaching and financial support in the areas of law, marketing, accounting and intellectual property rights, provided free of charge of for a low fee within structures such as incubators. However, the traditional assistance lacks of skills and expertise in the new techniques and tactics aimed at deeply understanding both the needs of entrepreneurs and customers.This is why the project aimed at combining in an original way the gamification theory and the ‘growth hacking’ strategy.This innovative mix will allow to deliver new skills to business developers and coaches in assisting entrepreneurs, by offering both a more personalized assistance to be focused on the specific needs of each entrepreneur, and by helping them in ‘automating’ the generation of ideas according to the growth hacking strategy.Through the project, new skills will be delivered to 10 professionals for each partner, for a total of 80 gamehackers. Participants will be graduates, business developers, tutors at incubators and business accelerators.The new figure created will be a flexible, multi-tasking expert able to deeply understand the behavior, attitudes, thoughts and emotions of the entrepreneurs, and to assist him/her in the ruthless selection process of the ‘entrepreneurial Darwinism’ through unconventional activities based on game-play techniques such as strategy, goals, rules, scoring, levels etc. Successful gamification does not always depend on the complexity of the game play, but the key is forcing deeper connections with the players.Organization that have successful implemented gamification techniques design experiences that motivate and engage users to advance their personal and business goals. The project aim at creating a pilot transnational training course based on formal, informal and non-formal training (MOOC, live training, workshops etc.) to be replicated in the future through the involvement of business accelerators, business schools, research centres and public organizations in the field of entrepreneurship. The sharing of collected results in the testing phase will allow the creation of a high-standard competence profile through the definition of a quality standard to be fulfilled by all bodies aiming at becoming part of the network.Through the implementation of a virtual platform, the GAG-Platform, OER will be made available and the participants will be involved in 3 national meetings for each country, after the end of the project, in order to disseminate the project results. Furthermore, the construction of a Community of Practice for sharing innovative gamehaking capsules, both in the public and in the private sectors will be an asset assuring project sustainability and process innovation.The consortium comprises 8 international partners from Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Italy and Portugal having the expertise and know-how for building an European Network of business game-hackers. This international partnership will offer the proper framework for discussions, sharing of experiences, innovative practices and methodologies and also for development of results.The main results are the identification of emerging “hard” and Soft” skill set, related to the new challenges addressing the entrepreneurial coaching sector; to validate a cross-country and cross-sectorial methodology for participatory need analysis; to generate a permanent open repository for innovative self-training and self-assessment among gamification experts and entrepreneurial coaches; to test peer-to-peer training and skills evaluation by generating software-based tool; to create a unique competence profile for gamehackers; to create a Virtual Learning Hub in order to establish a network of European qualified gamehackers.The envisaged impact is reflected in the improvement of training schemes aimed at addressing incubation and acceleration managers and innovative training solutions to enforce growth-hacking related competences, promoting awareness on the European dimension of entrepreneurship coaching, enlarging information concerning innovative paths for business coaching training.

Metropolitan Inclusivity in Climate and Digital Transitions (MICAD), is an innovative project dedicated the creation of a framework for inclusive metropolitan planning focusing on climate and digital transitions. The primary objective is to advance inclusive metropolitan planning, a goal that will be realized through the creation of a toolkit for local and regional authorities. The effectiveness of this toolkit will be demonstrated with the elaboration of five roadmaps for digital or climate transition in different cities with diverse backgrounds, accompanied by the formulation of policy recommendations to amplify its impact. To achieve these ambitious objectives, a robust consortium, boasting diverse expertise in urban planning, co-creation, and living lab methodologies, has been assembled. Partners will collaborate closely to empower local and regional authorities with the necessary skills to implement these methodologies effectively. Capacity building efforts will extend to replication and exploitation partners, leveraging their extensive networks to disseminate these methodologies globally and assist other international actors in navigating similar transitions. The project will also contribute to the academic discourse by publishing a set of recommendations and articles, further expanding its impact. MICAD's significant contribution lies in fostering international cooperation among local, regional, and international actors. Through this collaboration, the project aims to identify the risks and opportunities associated with implementing inclusive and participatory planning processes. The study and application of community-held innovative processes will provide insights into the most effective and engaging participatory policy-making strategies. The results of these studies will be shared, leading to the proposal of solution models that can be adapted to various contexts.

AWARD recognises the urgency of action due to water scarcity and climate change impacts as well as the need to engage simultaneously the society, the science and the policy into the development of knowledge and strategic water planning. Therefore, AWARD will provide evidence-based solutions to consider AWRs into water supply strategic plans, based on socio-political engagement. The 4 Demo Cases of AWARD are already implementing AWRs (storm water, rainwater and aquifer recharge in Bucharest in Romania as well as in Milano in Italy; water reuse in Cyprus, storm water and rainwater in an industrial park in Santiago di Compostel in Spain). Through the project activities, Demo Cases will consider scaling up their actions taking in account a broader range of AWRs together with conventional water resources for planning future water supply systems at local or regional level using AWARD instruments (Local Water Fora, Digital Platform for decision making, training and guidance). They will address similar issues in a harmonised and coordinated way. Societal awareness to support the decision process on AWRs supply solutions will lead to the recommendations for further use of AWRs encompassing the 4 dimensions of social innovation (Technological, Capacity development, Governance & Policy, Economics & assessment). The AWARD AWRs catalogue will gather the project results and additional solutions which will be benchmarked. The digital platform provided by AWARD will support the exploration of resilient scenarios that will be promoted beyond the scope of the project thanks to dedicated networking activities. AWARD general objective is to provide evidence-based knowledge and lessons learnt on how to effectively integrate affordable, acceptable and reliable AWRs solutions into water supply strategic planning and implementation considering the effect of global changes.

The overall goal of MULTISOURCE is to, together with local, national, and international stakeholders, demonstrate a variety of about Enhanced Natural Treatment Solutions (ENTS) treating a wide range of urban waters and to develop innovative tools, methods, and business models that support citywide planning and long-term operations and maintenance of nature-based solutions for water treatment, storage, and reuse in urban areas worldwide. MULTISOURCE will allow users to identify multiple sources for local water reuse, promote increased uptake of nature-based solutions, and minimize discharge of water that has not received adequate treatment. MULTISOURCE will deliver new knowledge about ENTS and their ability to remove waterborne contaminants and provide effective risk reduction for chemical and biological hazards, as well as their capacity to be integrated into the landscape and contribute to the improvement of urban habitats. The project includes seven pilots treating a wide range of urban waters. Two individual municipalities (Girona, Spain; Oslo, Norway), two metropolitan municipalities (Lyon, France; Milan, Italy), and international partners in Brazil, Vietnam, and the USA will contribute to each of the main project activities: ENTS pilots, risk assessment, business models, technology selection, and the MULTISOURCE Planning Platform. The use of urban archetypes in the Planning Platform will enable users to quickly classify regions (in both developed or developing countries) suitable for the application of nature-based solutions for water treatment (NBSWT) and compare scenarios both with and without NBSWT. This unique approach provides the knowledge, business models, and modular tools that will enable stakeholders to conduct fit-to-purpose, large-scale planning in their local region and, in doing so, promote circularity and sustainable development in the urban water sector and overcome barriers to widespread uptake of nature based solutions for water treatment.

JUST STREETS is the project proposal from a team of 30 partners from 17 countries, including 12 cities representing more than 4,5m citizens. It aims to transform cities’ car-centered mobility narratives that take for granted that streets are for motorized traffic only, promoting walking, cycling and other active modes of mobility. JUST STREETS will be re-shaping street infrastructure and changing individual mobility behavior in 12 cities, while proactively sharing the generated “how-to-do-it” knowledge with hundreds of cities for rapid replication across Europe. In close collaboration with citizens, policy makers, experts, and interest groups the project will not only develop a new vision of spatial justice where streets become public space for all, but equally important find ways to rapidly implement changes. A strong focus is on displaying how necessary transformations in the face of climate change can (and must) successfully improve social justice, accessibility, inclusivity, and security along the way. Putting marginalized social groups, the most vulnerable mobility users, as well as those citizens at the core of JUST STREETS that have been previously underrepresented in mobility infrastructure decision-making will allow the project to create highly valuable knowhow, critical in creating better, more just, and sustainable cities for all citizens. The unique composition of the JUST STREET consortium is critical in making sure this knowledge is not only created, but subsequently shared with as many urban decision makers as possible from cities across Europe who have the means to initiate transformation in their cities. Top-level research and organizations with vast experience in the fields of mobility, urban planning, climate change, and social transformation are collaborating with the communication and dissemination expert partners who have established channels to reach and interact with tens of thousands urban decision-makers that will shape the future of cities