I-BIS is a consortium of 5 partners from the UK, Spain, Lithuania and Finland all committed to promoting entrepreneurship. I-BIS is an innovative training programme for business incubators across Europe. Its aim is to enable start-up companies to grow and become more European in their focus and trade. It responds directly to the contemporary European context, as business growth for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is of paramount concern for future job and wealth creation across the continent. At present, SMEs represent 98% of all enterprises across the EU (with micro-businesses comprising 92.2% of this). The project will be based on the highly successful European Business Growth Catalyst (EBGC), a training programme designed by top European Business Schools and consultancy firms, aiming to enable established SMEs in Europe to achieve financial growth. The training provided to SMEs within the framework of EBGC is based on the methodology of action learning, a learning style which requires learners to undertake specific actions and reflect on their results. SME growth is an activity which requires practical action and continuous refinement of the application of methods. Action learning is an excellent method to achieve this. I-BIS aspires to adapt the original European Business Growth Catalyst to the context of business incubators. Incubation is a relatively new term in global business terminology. There are currently an estimated 300 incubators in the UK, compared to only 20 in the late nineties, and 7.000 worldwide which means that the whole notion of incubation has grown significantly. There is evidence to suggest that the number of European accelerators and incubators has increased dramatically since the start of the financial crisis but a lack of long term impact business programmes remain.(Kawalek 2014) EBGC’s existing innovative training programme will be adapted and used to train the trainers of business incubators, enabling them to deliver to their clients a long lasting business growth programme. I-BIS will work directly with: 1) Incubator staff 2) Start-ups within partners incubators with special emphasis on increasing the representation of female entrepreneurs and indirectly with: 1) wider groups of Start-ups in other incubators 2) entrepreneurs generally 3) Key decision makers and stakeholders 4) Organisations working in the field of entrepreneurship Based on a needs analysis of incubators and Start-ups, the partnership will complete activities with the overall aim of: 1) Directly helping staff members provide the European Business Growth Training to Start-ups in their incubators 2) Supporting Start-ups especially when thinking about growing within an European context or what is also called promoting the "Europeanisation" of SMEs I-BIS will achieve this via concrete results: - I-BIS Training for incubators' staff A new training programme will be adapted by the partnership (based on EBGC materials) and will be designed to help incubator staff to deliver training to their start-ups in business growth. - Online Incubator An online Incubator will make the materials produced by I-BIS available freely to a wider audience of incubators, Start-ups, policy makers and the community. It will also bring together a range of other OER resources in a search-able catalogue which will help incubator staff and entrepreneurs find useful materials. - Guide for Incubator Managers This guide will help incubator managers offer the training to their Start-ups in a sustainable way. It will be a valuable resource with all the information needed to duplicate the I-BIS model. - Guide To Doing Business Online With the Internet being one of the most important ways of doing business for SMEs today, especially with customers in other European countries the partnership will provide participants with information on how to best sell their products and services through this medium. Partners will provide specific information on how online business is conducted in their country. - European Networking Area In order to encourage communication and cooperation between Start-ups in the partner countries and across Europe I-BIS will set up a networking area. It will be open to current participants and past EBGC members as well as the wider enterprise community in Europe in order to enable the sharing of best practices between Start-ups and already established businesses. It is envisaged that this will also be a networking platform for incubators across Europe who are passionate about the development of new business programmes. All I-BIS materials and resources will be freely available online and maintained after the project so incubators can continue to access the I-BIS tools and use them to help more businesses to set-up and develop.