Small and medium sized businesses in the service sector stands for an increasing part of employment in Europe. Entrepreneurship has been integrated in the curriculum across Europe and is an integrated part of almost all education programmes. Entrepreneurship education and programmes mostly focus on one country and one field. The aim of this project is to develop new innovative business ideas with service design by blending business ideas from five countries; Finland, Holland, Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden, and three different fields; hairdressing, media and fashion & clothing. The project comprise 7 different schools. About 120 vocational students and 20 teachers will participate in the project. In addition to blending business ideas from different countries and fields the project focus on future skills in sustainable development and circular economy as central themes. A good life is no longer achieved by simply producing more and more goods. How do we move to a circular economy, in which consumption is based on using services – sharing, renting and recycling – instead of owning things?, this is a question that every future entrepreneur should be able to answer (www.sitra.fi). The project also benchmark and develop new methodology and pedagogical tools for entrepreneurship education. A central theme is also aim to increase language skills, promote intercultural communication, develop intercultural sensitivity and teamwork skills for students and teachers participating in the project.
The aim of this project was to develop new innovative business ideas with service design by blending business ideas from five different countries and three educational fields; fashion and clothing, media and hair dressing. We wanted to increase international entrepreneurial competencies for the students and share ideas across countries and fields with the aim of getting more innovative business models as an outcome. We saw this project as an excellent opportunity to combine business ideas from different qualifications and to share ideas across countries and sectors, with the goal of reaching more innovative results. The focus of the business ideas laid on incorporating sustainable development and circular economy as central themes. We wanted to give the students future skills in the field of circular economy and sustainable development, giving them a foundation to build on in the future. For both the students and teachers participating we wanted to increase international teamwork and networking, promote intercultural communication, strengthen social and cultural awareness and develop language skills. We also wanted to lower the bar for the students to become real entrepreneurs in the future.
We applied for this project because we wanted to introduce an innovative way in developing new international business ideas with service design by blending ideas from five countries and three fields of education with the focus on sustainable development and circular economy. Entrepreneurship education and programs mostly focus on one country and one field - and we wanted to change this. Today, the need for future skills in sustainable development is significant, and therefore we especially saw the need in focusing on integrating sustainable development as the main focus in this project for developing innovative business ideas. In today’s world where the consumer culture is growing and growing, and our resources become more limited, sustainable development and moving to a circular economy should be one of the main focus points when developing new businesses. We also saw this project as a great opportunity to educate both our students and teachers with new international entrepreneurial competence and lowering the step for students to become entrepreneurs in the future. This was also an opportunity to give the students an international business focus and a unique chance to combine business ideas from three different branches.