ImpAct Agencies intends to reshape and make more efficient, through the Twinning Advanced methodology, a set of services to support BICs and incubators. Through an open social innovation model, the project will allow BICs and incubators to support social impact SMEs and entrepreneurs to achieve a better impact and play an active role within the local social innovation ecosystem. By matching and integrating social entrepreneurship support programmes, policy strategies and online tools, ImpAct Agencies aims to design a modular kit of tools and services for accompanying entrepreneurs in improving their social impact. The consortium is composed by four Innovation Agencies: ART-ER (Italy) - the project coordinator, Fundecyt-Pctex (Spain), WestBIC (Ireland) and IFKA (Hungary). All of them already work on the topic of social innovation and social entrepreneurship in different ways: shaping policy instruments, developing specific networks and projects or supporting and implementing policy strategies at local level. This twinning advanced action has a multiple goal, since it will support partners in: - carry on a peer review and assessment on their respective service through an active stakeholder engagement activity; - reshape and combine those services linked to open social innovation model; - design a new service package for BICs and incubators dealing with social innovation ecosystems; - set up permanent relations within the partnership with the aim of improving each partners’ services and - build an interregional community of social innovation agencies. The final output of the project is the drafting of a complete Design Option Paper, dedicated to analyse and describe all different scenarios in terms of background, framework conditions and organizations, process and service delivery system and stage of development. This will allow to transfer and mainstream the service delivery system to different EU contexts and agencies.

European rural areas embody outstanding examples of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CNH) that need not only to be safeguarded, but also promoted as a driver for competitiveness, sustainable and inclusive growth and development. RURITAGE establishes a new heritage-led rural regeneration paradigm able to turn rural areas in sustainable development demonstration laboratories, through the enhancement of their unique CNH potential. RURITAGE has identified 6 Systemic Innovation Areas (pilgrimages; sustainable local food production; migration; art and festivals; resilience; and integrated landscape management) which, integrated with cross-cutting themes, showcase heritage potential as a powerful engine for economic, social and environmental development of rural areas. The knowledge built in 14 Role Models (RMs) and digested within the project, will be transferred to 6 Replicators (Rs) across Europe. Through a multilevel and multidirectional process of knowledge transfer, RMs will mentor and support the Replicators in the development and implementation of their strategies and, at the same time, will further increase their knowledge and capacities. A robust monitoring system will assist this process. Local Rural Heritage Hubs, gathering stakeholders and civil society, will be settled in Rs to work as living labs where heritage-led rural regeneration strategies will be co-created and implemented, while in RMs they will reinforce the ownership of CNH. Both RMs and Rs will also benefit of the RURITAGE Resources Ecosystem, a set of tools including, among others, a rural landscape mapping tool (RURITAGE Atlas) and a Replication Toolbox within an online and interoperable platform. These tools will foster knowledge building, providing evidence and supporting replication and up-scaling activities of the implemented heritage-led regeneration strategies and plans, contributing to mainstream heritage in Regional, National, European and global policies.

POWDERBLADE aims to gain market acceptance and rapid market take up of an innovative materials technology involving carbon/glass fibres in powder epoxy to be commercialised initially in the production of larger wind turbine blades (60 metre +). The immediate impact of this disruptive materials technology in the wind energy sector will be reduced wind turbine cost (-20%). This in turn will lead to increased productivity of low-carbon energy from more rapid market deployment of large turbines. The reduction in costs and increase in productivity will reduce the Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) for the European citizen – the ultimate beneficiary of this innovation. This ambitious project is led by Éire Composites, an established industry player in composites manufacturing for the Aerospace and Renewable sectors and an experienced FP7/Horizon 2020 participant.In the year after project end, ÉireComposites will generate over €7m in revenue from direct sales of larger blade components using the new materials, increasing to €39m by 2021. The longer term commercial strategy is to focus on recurring revenues from the supply of advanced materials directly to manufacturers to produce blades and other products under license. This revenue stream will generate €60m by 2021. ÉireComposites will employ an additional 78 staff in direct production at project end increasing to 489 employees over both revenue streams three years later. Suzlon, a large wind OEM and end user, is the second industry partner. Their involvement demonstrates early market acceptance of the new technology. Suzlon are committed to investing substantial funds in the commercialisation of this technology in return for the opportunity to gain significantly as the first large industry player to market with light, cost-effective carbon-glass hybrid blades. Technology partner (University of Edinburgh) and innovation specialists (WestBIC) will support the industry partners in achieving the goals of POWDERBLADE.

The BEEHIVE project aims at building sustainable university-based entrepreneurial ecosystems in HEIs in ID and PH to enhance students’ and graduates’ entrepreneurial and innovation skills and their ability to create jobs. The project’s chief goal is to support the PC HEIs’ transformation into entrepreneurial universities, which in the long run will contribute to the development of knowledge-based societies/economies in ID and PH.The consortium combines the expertise of 4 EU HEIs in BG, GR, IS and IT and a Business and Innovation Center in IR, as well as 2 HEIs in ID, 3 HEIs and a Foundation in PH. The following key results will be achieved:1. Entrepreneurship for All MOOC to disseminate up-to-date training and knowledge in the field of entrepreneurship across the PC HEIs’ campuses and to build students’ entrepreneurial skills. At least 1000 PC HEIs students and graduates will benefit from the MOOC delivered in English through the project website.2. BEEHIVE Accelerator Programme induced at the PC HEIs to improve PC HEIs’ student and graduate employability and to create entrepreneurship-based self-employment opportunities through streamlined business start-up support in the framework of designated seed accelerators. At least 10 business start-ups will be created through the BEEHIVE programme.3. BEEHIVE Label designed to provide certification of PC HEI entrepreneurial ecosystems’ excellence and to stimulate PC HEIs’ gradual evolvement into entrepreneurial universities. At least 3 PC HEIs will be certified and awarded a BEEHIVE Label over the course of the project.The project introduces the novel holistic approach of entrepreneurial ecosystems that sees entrepreneurship not merely as individual efforts but as a process of networking and creating synergies between different stakeholders. Thus, through BEEHIVE PC HEIs will engage with a broad range of external stakeholders including business partners, investors, venture capitalists, social entrepreneurs, policymakers

Europe’s economic growth and jobs depend on its ability to support the growth of enterprises. Entrepreneurship favours new companies, opens up new markets, and nurtures new skills. The most important sources of employment in the EU are the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The EU objective is to encourage people to become entrepreneurs and also make it easier for them to set up and grow their businesses. Education for entrepreneurship can make a difference as young people who go through entrepreneurial programmes and activities start more companies and earlier.The main objective of the GET UP project is to provide a learning tool to promote entrepreneurship for youth by using new information and communication technologies (ICT), empowering participants with the knowledge and mechanisms to design their proper business models. The innovative aspect of this project is the Geomarketing supported on concepts of Location Intelligence that enables finding the best geographic location based on the intersection spatial data and several variable factors supported by a set of techniques for analysing the economic and social reality from the geographical standpoint, which includes mapping and spatial analysis tools on a cloud-based mapping platform, directing the needs of the entrepreneur for the location with higher potential of success and allowing to attract investment to different and deprive regions in the partner countries. Finally a business plan design is envisaged to be developed during the training course, including the definition of the product and of the financial, material and human resources, which are a great tool to support young entrepreneurs. The partnership is composed by 6 organisations from Italy/LUISS University, Portugal/AidLearn and ESRI, Greece/AUTH University, Spain/University of Salamanca and Ireland/WestBIC. The partners were chosen firstly based on their expertise facing the main objectives defined for the project and taking into account the desirable interaction between research and business fields; and secondly the majority of them presents a high experience in previous EU projects, which also enrich the partnership. Finally, the partners were chosen taking into account the youth unemployment rates present in their countries, the implementation of the GET UP project is an added value to the relevant economic and social needs of the partner countries. The main goal of the GET UP project is to increase awareness of the end-users, youth under 25s, unemployed with secondary school or higher education diploma and young secondary or graduate people seeking first job, on how to become an entrepreneur using the Geomarketing and location intelligence concepts to achieve their objectives and implement their business ideas. The GET UP project is structured in 3 Outputs: O1: Research on Entrepreneurship: a detailed research on Entrepreneurship able to a deeper understanding on what is an entrepreneur according to EU politics and the national requirements to create a company. O2: Research on Geomarketing: a detailed research on Geomarketing and Location Intelligence to know concepts, their application on business decisions and data to be used. O3: GET UP Learning Platform: an advanced Learning Platform with updated, high quality, easy and attractive contents. The GET UP project results are: - Research on Entrepreneurship - Research on Geomarketing - GET UP Learning Package - GET UP Learning Platform The GET UP Learning Platform, which combines the GET UP courses, an online Geographic Information System (GIS) and the Open Spatial Data Set, enables further assistance to the end-users to understand the importance of combining geographic data with business and market data in order to gain critical insights, make better-informed decisions, design processes and enhance operational efficiency. The GET UP Learning Platform is a useful tool to promote self-employment and also restore the confidence of unemployed youth through taking full advantage of the resources available in their countries, knowing the business community, market trends and getting knowledge about the territory where they live and segmenting it, in order to isolate the best places to put their business ideas into practice. GET UP main goal is to allow and support a concrete implementation of innovative businesses, enabling participants to become effectively entrepreneurs, spreading the concept of Entrepreneurship and Geomarketing as an essential core to make business, also to other potential entrepreneurs. The GET UP project is an excellent opportunity to reinforce the economic growth, helping to rebuild the economies of partners countries and reaching potentially 1,4 million of unemployed youth (under 25s) in partners countries (actually 36% of youth are unemployed in EU28), maximizing also the most creative human capital of those countries.