Thriving in the new EU economy poses imminent challenges for entrepreneurs worldwide. Dealing with exponentially growing stocks of digital start-ups (and not only) that fast-paced innovation at unimaginable speeds, entrepreneurs are not faced anymore just with a financial consideration dilemma when receiving or asking for investment. Fast-paced innovations are good and needed worldwide indeed and the global start-up ecosystems are exceeding all expectations to this end. But this is not enough. As the entire world is moving towards a more sustainable & fairer business & social ecosystem, so should entrepreneurs (EU Commission, 2021, GIIN, 2020) otherwise they risk not being able to reach investment. To this end, the concept of impact investment appeared (investment in startups that produce environmental and social benefits) and it is gaining big momentum in the startup scene (IRIS, 2020). As startups are becoming the backbone of the EU economy in terms of employment and innovation (EUROSTAT, 2020), a massive attention should be set on developing impact investment capabilities into the next generation of entrepreneurs.
The objectives of ARIEES are to help universities (and potentially adult training centers) to improve 1) their entrepreneurship courses by infusing impact investment know-how and 2) to upgrade the digital competencies of lecturers/trainers to ensure that the impact investment knowledge can be properly infused into the learners while 3) certifying competences and boosting the quality of entrepreneurship trainers. This will be done by developing:
• Result 1 – Acquiring responsible & impactful investment cours
• Result 2 – Webinars as pilots for the course (for students, startups and investors)
• Result 3 – Train the trainers webinars with digital education pedagogical innovations
• Result 4 – Digital micro-credential system development (based on EntreComp/DigComp)
• Result 5 – Networking platform: Impact investment Hub
ARIEES runs in between January 2021 – January 2023.
