<< Background >>During the last 2 decades switching from labor intensive to innovation-oriented economy has been a key priority of EU. In this scope, a high priority has been put on upskilling of low-skilled adults and adjustment of competencies of human resources to the new market requirements. While big competences and skills gaps still exist within the EU economy, taking advantage of current upskilling efforts of individuals requires openness and ability of managers to put the new future-oriented skills to work within day-to-day business activities. Meanwhile, stakeholders engaged in multiple VET projects targeted on building innovation-oriented competencies among low-skilled adults and adults in needs for requalification has reported that lack of proper culture in their organisations and especially lack of ability and openness of SMEs managers to engage employees in decision-making and more collaborative work methodologies is a critical barrier to put their skills into practical application within their professional environment and to reach realistic benefits of their investment in upskilling. That is a relevant issue for EU struggling with the skill mismatch issue. From the other side, EU struggles to ensure wide engagement of SMEs in innovation, which is, among other barriers, related with lack of competencies and abilities to build proper organisational culture for innovation, that will allow to translate individual potential of the SME team into effective implementation of innovation and competitive advantage and sustainability for the SMEs. The inability of managers to put in place proper innovation environment and ensure optimal use of resources and competencies within their organisation is a common threat to sustainability and growth of SMEs especially in no/low tech industries, as well as to well-being of the employees in SMEs lacking innovation culture and their job security.<< Objectives >>To address the issue, common especially in countries with traditionally hierarchical professional culture, the InC partnership is looking to develop and test a solution for developing competencies of SMEs managers in no/low tech sectors (commonly not associated with innovation) to build innovation culture within their companies that will foster pro-innovative orientation of their teams and capitalization on individual competencies of their employees within SMEs.Within the InC activities, the partnership is looking to offer relevant and adjusted to specific needs of the target group development program that will allow them to gain practical competencies for implementing innovation culture in their SMEs. InC will also provide the new solution to VET and SMEs support sector to enable them to support 1/development of relevant innovation competencies among their stakeholders, 2/implementation of innovation culture in no/low tech SMEs, and 3/overcoming no/low tech SMEs' common barriers to effective engagement in innovation. The project is also expected to have significant impact on the ability of engaged partners to provide professional support to SMEs interested in development of innovation culture and relevant in this scope competencies.More, the partnership will put strong attention to building awareness of key importance of innovation culture in SMEs within broad SMEs' economic environment.<< Implementation >>To this end, the main activities will be related with delivering and testing a development program targeted at no/low tech SME managers covering:1. Awareness building for recognition of the importance for innovation and fostering innovation culture in SMEs – a program covering a mix of face-to-face and online activities and awareness campaign for sensitization of SMEs managers about relevance of developing pro-innovative environment within their organisations,2. Tools for increasing understanding of innovation concepts and their applicability in no/low tech sectors for building competitiveness and sustainability of SMEs,3. Practically oriented computer-mediated competence development program covering development within 5 thematic lines: i/Designing and leading innovation environment, ii/ Building the right team – hiring and positioning of HR for successful engagement in innovation, iii/Fostering innovation through communication, iv/Lean start-up, v/Digital solutions for fostering innovative culture, followed by the innovation culture challenge – a collection of practical challenges for SMEs managers to be implemented in day-to-day professional activities, based on individual task delivery system as learning-by-doing e-guide to implementing innovation culture in SME.To effectively reach InC objectives, complementing the solution development transversal activities will cover management and coordination across the partnership, as well as monitoring, evaluation and quality assurance. Some of key milestones will include testing of the solution with the target group, knowledge exchange activities among partner organisations, consultations with External Advisory Board, definition of exploitation strategy, multiplier events for exchange of the knowledge developed and dissemination of the solution among relevant stakeholders with aim to foster application of project results and of the lessons learnt. However, to ensure the project and solution realistic impact, the partnership will pay special attention to activities related with communication, dissemination and engagement of stakeholders, with specific strategy covering a mix of virtual, media-mediated and face-to-face activities carefully curated for maximum impact and outreach among relevant stakeholders.<< Results >>Within the project the main outcome will take a form of integrated development program for building competencies for implementing innovation culture in SMEs among SMEs managers in no/low tech sectors and methodologies and tools for VET, SME support organisations and other relevant stakeholders to support SMEs innovation culture and overcoming barriers to innovation within no/low tech sectors. Intellectual outputs produced for this purpose will cover:- InC Sensitisation Methodology and Tools,- InC Innovation Cards,- InC Competence development program,- InC Innovation Culture Challenge,- InC Online Platform.Additionally, intermediary results for support of project development, implementation and impact will cover among others, management, communication and monitoring strategies, communication and dissemination materials (including webpage, social media pages and relevant contents, newsletters, leaflet, press releases etc.), performance, financial and dissemination reports, exploitation agreements, multiplier events, piloting questionnaires and reports. Besides the physical outcomes, the project is expected to result in:- increased competencies of SMEs managers in no/low tech sectors to effectively implement innovation culture in their companies and successfully translate innovation efforts into improved performance and sustainability of their SME, - easy access of SMEs managers to competencies development for building innovation culture, - increased ability of VET and SMEs support organisations to support development of innovation competencies of SMEs managers, - development of critical competencies of partner organisations to provide support for implementing innovation culture in no/low tech SMEs, - increased understanding and knowledge regarding different facets of innovation culture among involved staff, - increased innovation-orientation of SMEs in involved regions, - increased collaboration toward fostering innovation culture in no/low tech SMEs at regional and international levels.

"The project ACT2IMPACT aims to tackle the existing gap between the set of soft skills detained by young adults preparing to enter the labor market or recently in their first job and the needs currently faced by companies. Due to the fast changing business environment, were the technological advancements brought new challenges to the growth and competitiveness of companies, the set of skills needed from professionals is also changing. Alongside with strong qualifications and ability to learn, soft skills such as critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, collaboration, among others are becoming more and more relevant. These are not just the skills that will be required for the new jobs emerging from the technological and digital business transformation, but are also key skills that will support companies to be competitive in the market. While the topic of the ""new jobs"" has been under discussion for quite some time, already, the transformation in the labor market is already in place and will increase in a very short term. Therefore, while the traditional education system is still changing in a very slow mode, solutions to support young adults to face the new challenges of the changing labor market are already highly needed.Based on the existing gap and aware of the urgency to develop innovative solutions to support the development of key soft skills among young adults entering the labor market, the partnership developed the project ACT2IMPACT. The project proposes the development of an upskilling pathway that, through an integrated approach, supports the development of Critical and Creative Thinking soft skills. Through the approach developed under the project, also Collaborative soft skills will be tackled. The project proposes a blended approach, based on short online training courses dedicated to Critical Thinking and Creativity, blended with ""in-person"" team work for an effective skills development.The target group of the project are young adults aged between 20 and 30 years old.From the project will result 5 Intellectual Outputs, that in the future can be used as an integrated approach, as proposed by the project or individualy: O1. Training package for Critical Thinking skills development; O2. Debate Forums - Methodological approach and guidelines for implementation; O3. Online platform - European forum and online training; O4. Training Package on Creativity; O5. Hackaton for new solutions - Methodological Guidelines.To test the solutions and programme designed, the partnership will implement a piloting phase, in which will engage around 100 participants from the 5 countries of the partnerhisp. The piloting phase will allow to analyse the impact of the solution in the target group, collect feedback on improvements and/or opportunities to further develop the programme, and elaborate recommendations both for the implementation of the solutions by future users and recommendations for local/regional and national political decision makers in order to promote the programme as a tool to boost the competitiveness and atractiveness of the regions.For the project development, a complementary team from 5 EU countries was gathered: FUNDEUN (ES) as project leader, E&D Knowledge Consulting (PT), EURO-NET (IT), University of Thessaly (GR) and Danmar Computers (PL).The project will have the duration of 26 months."

There is a multiplicity of ideation techniques and tools available, to enhance SMEs creation, innovativeness, performance and product development. However, these tools and techniques remain either unknown to majority of SMEs or, in ideation and its importance for growth and innovation aware SMEs, not implemented as a structured process. In vast majority of SMEs the responsibility for generating ideas and starting the innovation process is still attributed and/or controlled by top management (Fernández-Esquinas et al 2017) creating a barrier for the engagement of all staff or external partners in the process. Innovation is established for many years as a key to growth, sustainability and competitiveness of companies. But the current COVID-19 pandemic situation has highlighted even more its importance. The unexpected unprecedented situation has challenged all companies and professionals to outstretch their resilience and innovation skills to survive. While many struggled to survive the economic impact caused by the pandemic, some firms shown their ability to become creative and innovate, adjusting processes and relocating resources to deliver new products highly responsive to new conditions. However, majority of companies has been struggling with the need to adjust to the new global situation. In this scope, the creative sector was one of the most affected sectors with a drastic reduction of its activities and a huge economic impact. But while the pandemic has spotlighted the general lack of flexibility and readiness of the entrepreneurial ecosystem to react fast, it also increased the openness to innovation and cross-sectoral collaborations and opportunity to improve innovation processes and culture inside companies. In this context, IDEA project proposes a new solution to tackle the opportunity created, by providing new tools and development path to support companies to develop new solution through ideation processes. The process is to be further enhanced by a close collaboration between traditional and creative SMEs and startups as a way to increase the quality of the ideas for innovation developed and to reduce the existing gap between companies from these sectors. By joining SMEs, startups and creative industry all will benefit from multitude of visions and approaches and cross sectoral collaborations that will unlock new sustainability opportunities for all. Thus, the project aims to develop a new tool to support innovation, creativity and collaborations as a mean to growth, sustainability and resilience under unexpected situations.Under IDEA project, gathering 5 organizations from 4 different countries, 3 intellectual outputs will be developed: O1. Innovation, creativity and multidisciplinary collaboration - Awareness and engagement methodology; O2 - Online platform, where participants will find a learning and practical path to implement ideation techniques with opportunity for collaboration between participant traditional and creative SMEs; O3 - Learned lessons and recommendations guide, which aims to support the future adoption of the solution based on the learning and experience gathered by the partnership and a set of recommendations for the implementation of the outputs in different contexts.With the IDEA project, the partnership aims to deliver a solution to support SMEs to become more innovative and be more prepared to face the challenges and obstacles of unexpected and risky global situations like the currently COVID-19 pandemia.

Nowadays, many European citizens face high risk of unemployment due to fast changing requirements of the job market. Technological changes, decreasing relevance of traditional working competencies and key meaning of new ones put many Europeans in high unemployment risk (i.e. due to automation or inadequacy of their competencies) or employment out of their competence profile (skills mismatch) leading to decreased productivity and life quality (Rathelot & Rens 2017). Especially constant innovation related changes, new technologies or business models, create the need for fast adaptation and developing corresponding competences which are not immediately available at the job market.In this scope, taking into account especially the major role of SMEs for EU economy, open innovation (OI) provides companies unique chances to engage in forefront innovation in face of often insufficient resources (Vanhaverbeke 2017). This however requires recruiting specialised staff that could support OI processes. Despite increasing (and expected to increase further) role of such positions as OI specialist/manager, networks and partnerships coordinator, knowledge manager, managers struggle to source recruits with required competences in this scope, while many EU adults face unemployment or high unemployment risk (Dabrowska and Podmetina 2014, Cedefop 2018). The OPI project aims to develop and test a comprehensive methodology and tools for requalification of human resources to obtain professional competences for those future oriented positions in open innovation scope. Due to, from one side, high importance of OI especially for strongly SMEs based economies and from the other, limited understanding of the OI processes, their benefits and job market opportunities among many job market stakeholders, the OPI project will aim at building labor market intelligence and competences in the area of open innovation that will allow to effectively develop supply of skills to fill the market gap while capitalising on existing pool of human capital. To this end, OPI will develop solutions that will focus on capacitating HR professionals to provide quality career guidance and counselling in the area of open innovation opportunities and requirements together with ready to use requalification/upskilling tools for unemployed and adults in risk of unemployment. The project will approach the issue from 2 perspectives. First, it will improve awareness of OI related professions, of their relevance and specifications among the staff related with HR development and guidance (staff of HR agencies, employment offices, NGOs fighting unemployment issues and firms' internal HR staff) and capacitate the staff to prepare employees and job seekers to adapt to new types of positions. In this scope, the project will not only extend and develop the competencies of the HR personnel supporting adult learners, but will also provide them with ready to use digital tools to diagnose re-qualification potential and further on, an on-demand OI upskilling program developed for the specific needs of OI competence building of unemployed/adults in unemployment risk. Second, it will directly address the needs of unemployed and staff in the need of requalification or upskilling to obtain key for modern and future market competences which is highly obstructed by lack of awareness of OI in the target group and lack of access to high quality learning opportunities in the OI area. It will allow them to gain practical competencies responding to the market needs. By providing specific methodology based on empirical research of market, its future orientation and target group needs, the project will support the individuals in obtaining key competences highly relevant for employability and innovativeness in a long-term. In OPI scope they will not only gain access to their needs oriented program for development of in-demand professional competences, but by capacitation of the specific HR support staff they will gain access to guidance in the area and will obtain critical motivation related with realistic recognition for the competences relevance in their job market environment (EIB 2019).Specifically, the project will deliver:-Study of local state of open innovation competencies,-Methodology and tools to build open innovation understanding among HR specialist and build their ability to guide job seekers or employees through upskilling/requalification to take position in scope of open innovation, -Diagnostic tool to evaluate human capital in scope of open innovation,-E-learning solution for building unemployed/employees in high unemployment risk competencies to take roles in scope of open innovation,-Comprehensive requalification guide for HR professionals and adult educators.

IN_DIGIT2EU project aims to provide to skills for internationalisation to SMEs by providing integrating tool from one side evaluating the readiness for internationalisation and from the other allow access to upskilling path adopted to needs of SMEs. It includes an integrated self-assessment audit tool to test the readiness for internationalisation and a professional training course and additional resources, totaly delivered online, to support the development of skills for the implementation of internationalisation plans in companies. While EU and EU entrepreneurs strongly recognise the role of internationalisation, companies need to be prepared to face the challenges of internationalisation and involve skilled people, prepared to understand the requirements of these processes and capable to take advantage of the opportunities. Following the financial barriers (54%) and complicated administrative procedures (51%), EU entrepreneurs recognise that they do not have skills to identify and connect with foreign business partners (49%), do not have qualified staff to deal with export (48%), don't know the rules (46%), don't know where to find information (41%). While the need for providing qualified staff is clear, SMEs encounter problems in aquiring suitable qualified resources commonly more attracted to big organisations from one side and do not have common access to upskilling pathways in the area that would suit the needs for their staff skills development - especially the limited time and financial resources. IN_DIGIT2EU project is based on the perception of the need for companies to held skills and competences to face internationalisation, the importance of this skills to support employment, and the constraints that companies face to ensure the availability of these skills. For this, the project proposes the delivery of a self-assessment tool to test the readiness for internationalisation connected with of a Professional Training Course, that provides the opportunity to create training paths adjusted to the companies needs, totally delivered online, suitable for learning in working context and that combines e-learning features with a multi-sensory and interacting approach. Through the Online Platorm tool to be developed, users can not only gather knowledge and develop skills for internationalisation but also interact with users from many other locations, exchanging experiences, discussing opinions and learning with each other. Composed by 6 partners: Arad CDA (RO), Danmar Computers (PL), Kaunas University of Technology (LT), Technical Institute of Heraklion Chamber (GR), GrantXpert (CY) and E&D Knowledge Consulting (PT), the partnership represents 6 countries of the EU territory: Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Greece, Cyprus and Portugal. To achieve the objectives of the project, the partnership will develop SMEs needs specific learning solution integrating 5 IOs: 1. IN_DIGIT2EU Self-Assessment methodology and tool 2. IN_DIGIT2EU Training methodology and guide 3. IN_DIGIT2EU Training Toolkit 4. Online platform 5. Best practice guide During the Piloting experience, in which the partnership will aim the involvement of, at least, 120 participants from the 6 countries of the partnership, participants will have the opportunity to test the resources produced, attend online learning events and develop skills for internationalisation in interactive virtual environment. t the end of the project, the final users will have available an online tool with a self-assessment tool, a professional training course were they can also learn through webinars and online workshops, and contact with users from other countries. Based on the research of currently existing gaps the training will cover: i. international networking ii. international marketing iii. business models for internationalisation iv. e-commerce v. International Open Innovation Management As well as revision of the existing contents to systematise them for the purposes of the SMEs training needs