The EIT’s HEI Initiative, launched by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), aims to boost the innovation and entrepreneurial capacity of higher education institutions (HEIs) across Europe. The initiative supports HEIs in developing their capabilities to foster innovation, entrepreneurship, and collaboration with businesses and other stakeholders within their regions and beyond.

Thanks to this action, HEIs can apply for funding to implement projects that enhance their innovation and entrepreneurial capacity. On its end, this initiative provides for:

• Financial support
• Mentorship programs
• Access to the EIT’s network of innovation communities
• Capacity building opportunities for staff and students in innovation and entrepreneurship
• Sharing of knowledge and know-how (i.e., dissemination of successful model and approaches to innovation, business management and entrepreneurship)

The desired impacts from the participation of HEIs are:

1. Strengthening the ability of HEIs to develop and implement innovative solutions and practices
2. Facilitating collaboration between HEIs, businesses, research organizations, and public bodies.
3. Enhance the support provided to students, staff, and researchers in starting and growing businesses.
4. Integrate entrepreneurial education and training into HEI curricula and programs.

The EIT’s HEI Initiative has aimed to transform the role of higher education institutions in Europe’s innovation landscape. By enhancing the entrepreneurial and innovation capacity of HEIs, the initiative seeks to create a more dynamic, competitive, and inclusive European economy.

Here below for reference brief presentation of three international projects supported by the initiatives addressing the development of an entrepreneurial ecosystem at HE level and sustaining mentoring schemes for staff and students to pursue and further develop their business ideas:

INVENTHEI, www.inventhei.eu:

INVENTHEI envisions that by 2025 a critical mass of highly educated young entrepreneurs and innovators will be trained by the participating higher education institutions (HEIs), contributing to the emergence of highly dynamic innovation districts and favouring the setup or inshore of knowledge-intensive companies offering cutting edge technologies, added-value products and services, and innovative business models. Innovation districts also have enhanced capacity to provide students with new ideas, skills and entrepreneurial talent. Students are the new generation of professionals, but they can also be trained and encouraged to become innovators and entrepreneurs, contributing to the creation of jobs and economic growth.

Entrepreneur, www.entrepreneurproject.eu:

Entrepreneur is a project to support European universities in becoming more entrepreneurial and innovative. By fostering competences of the future, it will secure a new generation of student entrepreneurs and innovators. The project will bring radical change by creating student-centred, non-elitist, open and inclusive universities based on collaboration between higher education institutions, public and private sectors, and citizens.

SMART4FUTURE, www.smart4future.com:

SMART4FUTURE helps to solve the challenge posed to higher education institutions (HEIs) by the unprecedented technological advancements of today. Digital technologies are becoming increasingly complex, more embedded, more miniaturised and more autonomous. They have become invisible and yet they have an enormous impact on people’s lives. Fuelled by this rapid change, the job market has, in the short run, become volatile and unpredictable. This means that students are entering higher education learning paths while having little to no idea how the skills they are about to acquire will measure against the needs of the job market decades after they leave higher education. SMART4FUTURE believes that only smart innovation ecosystems, which will be able to leverage the power of high-tech with the innovation and entrepreneurial capacity to think with and beyond traditional domain knowledge, can successfully answer that challenge.