There is a pressing need to address environmental problems such as resource depletion, climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, etc. and transition to a more sustainable socio-technical system.To address the mentioned challenges the concept of the Circular Economy (CE) has recently gained significant importance. Central to this relatively new sustainability paradigm is the emphasis on new business models (BM).All over the world, mission-driven entrepreneurs are bringing fresh, disruptive innovations to market in response to some of these challenges. The potential is there, and many sustainability-oriented incubators are appearing, but this phenomenon is far from mainstream and not methodologically implemented. On the contrary, even some basic knowledge on how to reactively deal with environmental and social regulatory and societal demands is absent from the training offers and counselling many incubators offer to start-ups. The idea of CircularStart is grounded on the recognition that there is a lack of know-how and training of start-ups and entrepreneurs in the field of sustainability, CE and their opportunities. In order to be successful, this knowledge needs to be easily integrated into the business idea development and decision-making process, i.e. there is a need for training supported by practical tools that are compatible with well-known BM development methods like e.g. the Business Model Canvas.Therefore, the aim of this project is to develop an interactive guidance tool and related eLearning resources as well as a training program for incubators and consultants to support start-ups to understand, evaluate and improve sustainability issues related to their BM. They should offer a comprehensive guide over the whole BM design process, covering the Initiation, Ideation and Integration phase. The tool and training materials will be developed to be used in direct personal context (such as a classroom, a workshop or a counselling meeting) and as self-study-based eLearning resources.Accordingly, the consortium consists of nine partners representing universities and research centres that for many years have been working on sustainable products, services and businesses, and incubators/accelerators or organizations that represent them, from four distinct EU countries (Austria, Spain, Slovenia and Portugal). The partnership represents different socio-economic, regulatory and financial backgrounds which are essential to ensure that the project responds to the start-ups’ needs in a meaningful and reproducible way across the EU.In the long term, the project will promote and support the development of sustainable BMs across Europe and raise awareness among start-ups, their consultants and investors on the need for more sustainable products, solutions and businesses. Accessible, easy to use and internationally founded eLearning materials and competence building support this. Moreover, the implementation of the project results and their impact will directly or indirectly benefit, beyond the project, society (generating new jobs, new skills, international cooperation…), the economy (generating new business models, wealth sharing…) and the environment (extending the permanence of materials in the economy, optimizing the materials and reducing waste).The project is structured to develop three Intellectual Outputs:O1 - Guidance tool for integrating Circular Economy aspects into Business ModelsO2 - eLearning resources on integrating Circular Economy aspects into Business ModelsO3 - Circular Economy Business Model awarding schemeThe intellectual outputs will be developed through a number of activities:• Definition of the methodology for the guidance tool which integrates CE aspects into the development of BM. The structure of the well-known BM Canvas will be used as a reference and sustainability criteria will be integrated along its nine elements• Elaboration of training resources focused on the integration of sustainability in BMs• Definition of the specifications of the tool and eLearning resources and subsequent programming. The guidance tool and eLearning resources with other relevant content such as examples will be programmed and integrated in a web-platform• Testing the training materials. The eLearning resources and tools will be tested at two different levels: expert business coaches' level (internal and external) and start-up level• Development of criteria to evaluate the circularity of BM to identify the BMs with a higher sustainability impact besides other important business criteria• Evaluation of the circularity and sustainability of the BMs developed by start-ups based on the use of the CircularStart guidance tool and training materials• Definition of the award setting and implementation. National Award Ceremonies will take place in each country with the aim of disseminating the CircularStart project results and multiplying the methods and tools for further implementation.

SCC (Sharing, Collaboration, Cooperation) is an Erasmus+ strategic partnership that unites co-working spaces, higher education institutions, innovation communities, international networks and umbrella organizations, with the general objective of stimulating the development of collaborative spaces for innovation and anticipating the transition to a digital society.In 2017 Cooperatives Europe launched a vision paper titled “A cooperative vision for the collaborative economy,” presenting the European institutions with a set of recommendations to shape a “responsible, sustainable and community-driven collaborative economy”.This project was built in the footsteps of that vision paper and adopted the definition of collaborative economy presented in it. To bring forward the reflection in this field, the partners researched the relationship between innovation and collaboration and produced 4 Intellectual outputs:- Best practices report on collaborative spaces and cooperative governance models (PDF)- Mapping of higher educational programmes embedding work-based learning in co-working environments (delivered in PDF and as an interactive online map on scc.coop)- Caracol Toolkit: Community-Aware Research and Action toolkit for Collaborative Learning (available on scc.coop website as )- Collaborating in times of crisis: Lessons learnt during the Covid-19 pandemic (PDF)The partners explored many dimensions of the topic. Starting from the definition of coworking and collaboration, to mapping existing higher education curricula offering work based learning through coworking spaces, to developing a comprehensive toolkit to support communities in the launch of their own collaborative initiatives, to imagining the future of work and collaboration after the Covid-19 pandemic.The multiplier events organised have reached directly over 100 people live and many more online disseminating project results and all the content published on the project website scc.coop.Partners and associated partners are committed to maintain the network alive and make use of all the produced materials to continue promoting and supporting community-driven innovation.

"TEAMIT+ aims to help change the pedagogical model on entrepreneurship and innovation education. Until now, these fields have been focused on the ""Individual Entrepreneur"" and on innovation that is mainly evaluated on the market. With TEAMIT+ we want to show in the long term that in order to meet the objectives of sustainable development, entrepreneurship and innovation must not only be thought differently but also taught differently. Entrepreneurship must become an entrepreneurship that responds to the objectives of sustainable development, it must promote equality and in particular by defending cooperative values. Innovation must now be based not only on market potential but also on responses to environmental and climate issues. In this perspective, the creativity methods taught must take into account the social and environmental benefits of innovation. To achieve this the project will make a territorial diagnosis of European regions to identify societal and economic challenges and understand the situation of different territories. This information will be used to create a novel ""Learning by creating"" learning model that will be later implemented in the trainning programme. TEAMIT+ includes two editions of the programme which consist on three modules in which participants (young people from 16-30 years from VET and HE, jobseekers and imigrants) will learn about climate change awareness and environmental issues, impact innovation and teampreneurship. The consortium will also work in the replicability of the course and will create a replicability guidelile to facilite the replication by other educational centres. In the 2 editions of the course more than 1.300 young people will be benefited as well as other other stakeholders like companies (>80). Main results of the project: TEAMIT+ trainning programme, replication guideline, white book, EU policy recomendation, commitment bookelts, trained volunteer, 20 business projects and entrepreneurs network."

beFORE took on the challenge to transform university entrepreneurship education, company training and business practice. The project consortium developed and released the original educational offer, which would nurture Futures Literate Individuals with improved capacity for analysing and dealing with the unknown future challenges when pursuing a professional career, managing an organisation or developing innovations. The project contributed to building a methodological and theoretical framework for future-oriented entrepreneurship coupled with the development of e-learning based educational solutions, in order to facilitate achieving a desired foresight awareness and maturity levels among entrepreneurs, students and educators.The specific needs of the target groups were analysed in a pan-European survey and effectively addressed in the educational offer composed of: one main and the three auxiliary e-learning courses for students, entrepreneurs and academics. Futures Literacy e-learning courses were tested among target groups in national pilots in: Poland, Italy, Germany and Spain. The European-targeted results of the project provide an effortless starting point for wide implementation across other countries, to which the associated partners (i.e. ISPIM, FEN, EPPM) will contribute to. The project outputs are instrumental in acquiring knowledge and skills: (i) by university teachers and company training providers allowing them to educate Futures Literate Individuals (ii) by entrepreneurs enabling them to take advantage of market and technological opportunities leading to innovations (iii) by students helping them to capture and develop business ideas. The project creates long-term impacts through: (iv) increasing synergies between educational offer of academia and business (v) increasing interdisciplinarity and flexibility of higher educational offer (vi) laying foundations to transform organisations into anticipatory and adaptive systems.

<< Background >>There is a significant social investment gap in Europe, in particular with regard to social care and support. The situation has only worsened with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many social care providers traditionally rely on public forms of investment and have more limited understanding of private investment. Similarly, private investors tend to not have a good understanding of social care and support. Universities do not have strong training programmes on social investment.<< Objectives >>The main project objective is to boost social investment in Europe by establishing a Knowledge Alliance that provides professional development opportunities to create more informed intersectoral working between investors and social care providers.<< Implementation >>By the end of the project, the a4i project has helped social care providers, private investors and higher education institutions to form a common understanding on social investment and develop training material; both online and face-to-face.<< Results >>The main results of the a4i project are - State of Play report on Social Investment, European Guidance on Social Investment- a universal professional development programme on social investment & transpositions in BE, CZ, ES; following pilots in the three countries involved- An online knowledge centre with a Massive Open Online Course (Universal & BE, CZ, ES), a list of promising practices, a mentor database and much more.