online Business and e-cOmmerce cOaching for increasing entrepreneurShip among youTh

Project summary

CONTEXT Youth entrepreneurship, especially youth start-up companies are an essential part of EC's priorities for the attainment of a sustainable and durable European economy growth. This program aims to empower young entrepreneurs with the digital skills and knowledge required in order to help them run and manage a digital businesses successfully and effectively. BOOST4youth project concerns a complete training program for digital entrepreneurship of youth companies, mainly start ups complemented by smart use of ICT for reduction of operating costs and cross border business activity leading to increase in competitiveness. The beneficiaries of BOOST4youth, male/female entrepreneurs, aged 18 to 35 will: - improve their knowledge and skills; - acquire new skills; - continue their personal or professional development. OBJECTIVES Help entrepreneurs to improve their skills and knowledge about issues concerning digital entrepreneurship (e.g. Digital Marketing, e-Commerce, etc.). The objective is not to look into digital entrepreneurship or e-Business/e-Commerce concepts in a vacuum, but address them in direct relation to the adoption of proven digital practices and tools as "healthy" online entrepreneurship drives revenues and reduces operating costs. Therefore, sustainable financial management cannot be isolated from uses of ICT. PARTICIPANTS The partnership comprises 6 partners from 6 countries. A digital strategy agency and an educational software provider, both active in software development for commercial purposes and with their own products and services, a private business school (HE) with focus on youth and woman entrepreneurship and an innovation hub, two VET organisations delivering training around ICT related subjects and with significant experience in youth projects and a technical consultancy and staff sourcing company with primary research in personalised ICT-enabled E&T and digital marketing coaching. ACTIVITIES BOOST4Youth partnership will design, develop, test, implement and disseminate an innovative training framework (modular training course along with online and conventional training materials facilitated by two innovative tools, the Digital Strategy Genie and the Learning Motivation Environment) that will support the in-service training and up-skill of the target groups. The development of the proposed training framework will be based on the adoption of a user-centred approach. The assessment of the training program will include extended cycles of training activities and work place centred work including skills retention. Trainers will continuously give feedback to the project team about their experiences gained at the workplace. This not only will increase the motivation of the trainers, and give weight to their practical experiences, but will also provide the necessary cross-links between theory and practice. Upon suggestions of the trainers, the project team will perform the necessary adjustments to the training approach. METHODOLOGY The project methodology can be summarized as follows: - Make a comparative analysis from a critical viewpoint of the current state of play of e-Business practices from youth start ups in partner countries (analysed at proposal level initially) and identify winning practices (digital strategies, e-Commerce) from countries topping the start up charts on viability and growth. - Validate the needs of youth entrepreneurs from partner countries in relation to knowledge and skills for implementing the winning practices and identify and describe learning outcomes for the Digital Entrepreneur profile. - Elaborate a training methodology and a set of strategies for youth businesses. - Devise the list of actions to be implemented by youth businesses for materialising each strategy. - Design and develop the Digital Entrepreneur Course (DEC) to support the implementation of the actions. - Localise the strategies, actions and content. - Implement the ECVET tools. - Design the Digital Strategy Genie to personalise the strategies at the level of individual start up and deliver the actions for materialising each strategy. - Deploy, set-up and configure a Learning Motivation Environment (based on lykio - www.lykio.com). - Re-purpose and integrate the content as interactive multimedia resources for skills retention. - Train a number of appointed instructors/trainers to the methodology, course and delivery tools. - Organise pilots. - Process results. RESULTS The outcomes comprise the: - Digital Entrepreneur Course (DEC): instructor led and e-Learning - Digital Strategy Genie: personalisation of training paths - Learning Motivation Environment: skills retention module - ECVET tools for the Young Digital Entrepreneur LONG TERM BENEFITS Entrepreneurs will be in position to implement digital strategies at their business which will ensure sound financial management, reduction of operating costs, increase of revenues through eBusiness resulting to less business failures.