THE ENTREPRENEDU PROGRAMME: AN EDUCATIONAL AND SCALABLE MODEL FOR ENHANCING THE EUROPEAN ENTREPRENEURIAL ECOSYSTEMS

European entrepreneurial ecosystems are encountering heightened global competition, however bridging the innovation gap within European countries and regions remains crucial to furnish educational schemes and supportive mechanisms for youth and startups. Technologically driven sectors such as spacetech, deeptech and climate tech offer fertile ground for innovation, but new entrepreneurs, students and researchers often lack the necessary expertise to build resilient and prosperous businesses. To provide the right know-how, and to support the birth of innovative ideas and ultimately strengthen entrepreneurial ecosystems the programme ENTREPRENEDU - Enhancing Entrepreneurial Ecosystems for Education - brings together several innovation stakeholders and educational entities from 6 different European countries, 3 low/moderate innovative regions Italy, Bulgaria and Greece and 3 high innovative regions Belgium, Germany and Ireland. ENTREPRENEDU - is a Horizon Europe financed programme, coordinated by E. Amaldi Foundation, that aims to create a more innovative, entrepreneurial and sustainable European higher education system. The programme is conceived for students, young entrepreneurs and start-ups working in the space economy, deep tech and green and digital transition and aims at creating a high replicable and scalable Venture Building Programme for both businesses and educational systems via a series of 3 Hackathons, developed at regional level, supporting developed concepts and ideas to become concrete solutions. ENTREPRENEDU aims to foster the birth of innovative ideas that will have an impact on both the Green Deal and the SDGs, as well as on gender equality, with the goal of having concrete projects for a better and more sustainable world. This second paper closely follows the results presented last year and aims to provide all relevant updates from last year’s discussion and a complete overview of ENTREPRENEDU’s scalable and replicable Venture Building Programme, presenting the Venture Building Syllabus and providing a comprehensive overview of the 3 organised hackathons and the Mentoring Programme. The study will then present the best practices implemented by the consortium to engage students and young entrepreneurs from the space sector and beyond to provide them with entrepreneurial skills tailored to their needs to become successful entrepreneurs.