Entrepreneurship has been highlighted as a key action by the European Commission as a powerful driver of economic growth, job creation and innovation. Recent communications from European Union are clear: Europe needs more entrepreneurs. However, entrepreneurs still lack the basic cultural and educational conditions to compete on a worldwide market, and more investment in entrepreneurship education is needed. To reach these goals, formal education is not enough. Ideas are put into action when learning is supported by direct experience of the economic environment.The ENDuRE Knowledge Alliance designed innovative approach for the education of new entrepreneurs and support aimed at increasing resilience and competitiveness of European startups.Academies and companies worked together to face the challenge of reducing probability of failure in startups, helping existing enterprises grow quickly and overcome the “Valley of Death”. The project designed and developed a holistic framework to transform ideas into technically and economically sustainable businesses. ENDuRE mixes learning by doing, cross-border collaboration and the strategic support of new startups by successful companies in a win-win environment. Its key features include innovative solutions in technical opportunity scouting and market/technology assessment; pretotyping, conceptual design, and reinforcement of products/services and business models; IP mapping, and competitive intelligence analysis; advanced prototyping of products/services; field support through knowledge exchange and startups’ full immersion within hosting companies. After three tests within a European network of academies and business players, a set of educational and practical tools are now available. They are aimed at guaranteeing the reproducibility of the approach. The educational and training materials are available on the project website for target stakeholders to be transferred in different programs, as well as to be used at different stages of the start-up growth.

Project was based on three pillars: First one;a work based learning was developed (WBL) model for higher education institutions and adapted relevant lectures appropriate to on-job training activities, second one was developed a 'training of facilitator' program to increase efficiency of on-job training activities and the third one was developed an e-platform to use as training mediator and develop materials for e-platform. During first pillar of the project was make a comprehensive research on work based learning models in Europe by searching academic research results, policy papers and also using results of other projects already carried out.Innovative side of the first pillar was to prepare a survey to analyze needs and expectations of students, academicians and firms from internships / on-job training activities. Survey was implemented to over 3600 students, academicians and firm representatives at 6 European countries.A common work based learning model was developed and relevant lectures were adapted by considering cultural, practical and systematic differences of the participating countries according to results of survey and research findings.During second pillar of the project was developed a 'training of facilitator' program both for academicians and for training responsible of firms that were hosting students for on-job trainings. Although 'training of trainers' program had some common elements, and common developing and implementation rules, developing a program for academicians and firms representatives for facilitating on-job training activities to increase quality and efficiency of the HE programs was an innovative approach. It was that such a program helped to strengthen university-industry relationships and increase the quality of science, engineering and technology education by brought all relevant parties together. During third pillar of the project was developed a model based e-platform which allows academicians, firms and students to follow, monitor and assess on-job training activities and lectures related to that on-job training activities.E-platform was develop within the project brought together academy, including both students and academicians, and industry together to contribute higher education's quality, to facilitate transition between school and working life, to increase students and newly graduates employability,and also to support development and competitiveness of enterprises and particularly SMEs.6 national workshops, 2 international conferences, 1 ‘training of facilitators’ program, and on-job training activities were organized within the project. Intellectual outputs of the project was “Work Based Learning Model”, “Training of Facilitators Program” and “e-platform”. It was created awareness on all participants and relevant stakeholders about the importance of collaboration between university and industry to increase the skills and employability of highly trained students.Expected impacts on partner/shareholder universities were increased their education quality and achievements, expanding their Erasmus by signing agreements with partners universities and developed collaboration possibilities for other future projects.As the science parks were regional development zones, project's micro impact was directly to the regions that science parks of the partners serve.Desired impact was increment at the quality and achievements of universities, skills of students, employability of students, and competitiveness of enterprises.The desired national impact, academia and industry have created awareness about co-operation for the education and training of students and the dissemination of the model to be developed under the project in partner countries has been realized.The desired effect at the European level was to spread from e-platform and model Erasmus to universities that had bilateral agreements with each other, and to achieve students' standard education and training qualifications.It was also desirable to launch new collaborations and partnerships between different institutions that met together and find each other in the different activities of the project.Sustainability of the e-platform in the mean of availability was ensured by the coordinator as Mersin Technopark already had its own server.

Taking into account the fact that buildings constitute the largest end-use energy consuming sector, the design and development of solutions targeted at reducing their energy consumption based on the adoption of energy efficient techniques and the active engagement of citizens/occupants is considered crucial. Innovative solutions have to be implemented upon properly understanding the main energy consuming factors and trends, as well as properly modeling and understanding the citizens’ behaviour and the potential for lifestyle changes. The ENTROPY project addresses this challenge by building upon the integration of technologies that facilitate the deployment of innovative energy aware IT ecosystems for motivating end-users’ behavioural changes and namely: (1) the Internet of Things that provides the capacity for interconnecting numerous devices and applying energy-efficient communication protocols, (2) the evolvement of advanced Data Modelling and Analysis techniques that support the realization of semantic models and knowledge extraction mechanisms and (3) the Recommendation and Gamification eras that can trigger interaction with relevant users in social networks, increase end users’ awareness with regards to ways to achieve energy consumption savings in their daily activities and adopt energy efficient lifestyles as well as provide a set of energy efficient recommendations and motives. Novel practices that fully integrate information collected from a set of sensor networks and mobile crowd sensing activities are going to be exploited along with processes for monitoring, reporting and analysing sets of data with regards to energy consumption and the behavioural profile of citizens. The engagement and inclusion of end users will be strongly supported upon the development of a set of serious games and personalised applications. The designed IT ecosystem is planned to be validated in three pilot sites.