South-East European Research Centre (SEERC)

An innovative training structure focused on addressing the limited capability of young European ICT entrepreneurs to compete against global players, on enhancing their commercial readiness, and, on systematically connecting young ICT entrepreneurs to international markets is needed. This is a challenging task, since existing European ICT entrepreneurship training initiatives are characterised by two major hurdles.
The first, lies on a general fragmentation of European ICT entrepreneurship education and training programmes. This fragmentation has various dimensions, such as asymmetrical access to facilities, neglected vertical specialisation and cultural/legal contexts. The second cause of the lack of a holistic training structure, is the general absence of a ‘learning-by-doing’ training approach. Startify7 aims at connecting existing ICT entrepreneurial ecosystems, enact team-building approaches in young ICT entrepreneurship training, and, avoid linear and uncontextualised training processes.

Outcome 1: Seven Summer Academies in seven different European cities within a timeframe of two sequential summers (i.e. 2015 and 2016).
Outcome 2: Seven lean-training and thematically-focused training curricula, embedding a strong team-building process.
Outcome 3: An integrated network of trainers focused on hands-on and real-world knowledge transfer.
Outcome 4: A competition based on the best performing teams after the completion of each round of summer academies (two competitions in total).
Outcome 5: Complement, extend and enrich similar existing actions.
Outcome 6: A centralized social networking service, where up to date and relevant information is shared with the entrepreneurs.
Outcome 7: Academic partners in the consortium will try to provide credits (ECTS) to students after the successful completion of each academy.
Outcome 8: An integrated exploitation and sustainability plan with the aim of making STARTIFY7 a long-term viable Summer Academy.