Baltic Entrepreneurship Partners
(BEPART)
Start date: Jun 30, 2004,
End date: Dec 30, 2007
PROJECT
FINISHED
The idea of BEPART is to invest in interregional exchange of experience and cooperation in order to reach faster progress at local level. The partners aim to increase efficiency and impact of entrepreneurship promotion at universities and within local and regional networks. Achievements: The network operation BEPART (Baltic Entrepreneurship Partners) started in July 2004 and ended in Dec. 2007. Goals were directed to higher quality and impact of entrepreneurship promotion, especially in education and training at and by universities. Most important (and quite successful) was the exchange (of ideas, concepts, staff) between the BEPARTners and beyond, which the project did more than merely enable. BEPARTners are universities, polytechnics and incubator organizations in the Baltic Sea Area – and the project offered a unique chance to intensify interregional collaboration by working towards the narrower project objectives at the same time. 'Entrepreneurship is first and foremost a mindset.' (EU Green Paper on Entrepreneurship). BEPART gave and will give priority not to hardware but to ‘human software-development’ for entrepreneurship. When the project took off, main focus was on experience exchange within the common project-topic. Regional situations were compared, common issues and problems identified, and results published in a book, also as pdf online: 'Cultivating Entrepreneurial Regions: Cases and studies from the network project BEPART'. Inside the network, cooperation was backed virtually (e.g. by virtual work platform). Additionally on the spot visits and a component which led towards network learning and evaluation supported quality and learning. Results are published in 'The ongoing report of BEPART project and process' (Paula Kyrö & team, University of Tampere), and generalized within a scientific publication on network learning. BEPART worked on innovative approaches in entrepreneurship education especially within Action Learning and Reflection Groups (ARGs) in CP4. One output is a modular concept 'Training of Trainers in Entrepreneurship', which went partly into test-implementation. Another result (ready by the end) are BEPART teaching-cases for entrepreneurship educators and trainers (available e.g. as pdf from website). Also many other contributions on issues in entrepreneurship education were published. BEPART has helped partners to implement new courses and approaches in entrepreneurship training and development, to improve regional cooperation and to inspire others, build newly institutionalized university cooperation, or develop new project concepts,regionally and internationally. The project was especially sucessful in involving decision makers from organizations and regions. Regional conferences were one instrument to do so, and attracted some hundreds of participants. ‘Ten Propositions – Towards Entrepreneurial Regions’ (available in 15 languages) and an internet signature-campaign were a most important communication tool. Towards the end of Interreg III C Co-funding, the project focused especially on sustainabilty. Some follow up-project proposals, the many published results and still usable brochures/ publications, and finally the good cooperation-experience will support this future work.
Get Access to the 1st Network for European Cooperation
Log In