iEER - Boosting innovative Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Regions for young entrepreneurs
iEER (Boosting Innovative Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Regions for Young Entrepreneurs) was an Interreg Europe funded flagship project gathering together 10 regions around Europe. Initiated by a majority of European Entrepreneurial regions, iEER aimed to define smart paths and solutions for partners to boost and orchestrate regional entrepreneurship ecosystems supporting young entrepreneurs.
- Implementation date4/1/2016 - 3/31/2020
- FunderInterreg Europe
- Research programmeService Business and Circular Economy
- Project typeInternational RDI
- Themes
- Project manager
Composed of EER (European Entrepreneurial Region) and non-EER regions, the project Boost EER addresses the challenges regional authorities face in optimizing structural funds to support young entrepreneurs in the regions due to 1) Lack of awareness or entrepreneurial competence both for local and regional authorities (LRAs) and the higher education institution (HEIs); 2) Fragmented actions of actors either operating in silos or duplication of efforts, 3) Uneven development and resources between outlying and centre areas of a region and 4) Limited funding provision or at risk of ineffective management of funds.
Boost EER aims to define paths and solution for partner regions enabling HEIs and the other Quadruple Helix actors to be a part of thriving entrepreneurship ecosystem supporting young entrepreneurship through improving 11 ESIF programmes in 10 diverse regions from FI, DK, UK, IE, ES, IT, DE, FR, PL and RO.
In the 2 years of interregional learning and 2 years of monitoring, Boost EER taps the pool of EER expertise and transfers the best practices through peer-learning, guided workshops and bottom-up approach empowering the LRAs, HEIs, business and young entrepreneurs to take ownership of the development and implementation of 10 action plans. Boost EER also constantly involves non-partner regions (in particular less-developed regions) to validate the transferability of the best practices for European upscale.
Each endorsed action plan is envisaged to improve the addressed ESIFs through: project pipelines for best practise importing (entrepreneurial university and startup support), adaption of multi- level governance, multi-funding or/and a evaluation tool which ultimately lead to growth and more jobs.
Specific objective: 1. To bench learn how HEIs transform themselves into Entrepreneurial universities to integrate education, RDI and entrepreneurship to foster young entrepreneurship and, 2. how regions can seize the active role entrepreneurial university contributes to the entrepreneurial discovery of the region.
Follow us on Twitter at @BoostiEER
Website: interregeurope.eu/ieer
Project hashtag is #iEER
The project’s LinkedIn group can be found here https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8536343