D4 Entrepreneurship (Dream:Dare:Design:Do) is a partnership between six VET colleges (UK, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia) and a Business Incubation Centre in the UK. VET partners will also act as a host for 90 wider entrepreneurship ecosystem organisations/enterprises to participate. Commencing on 1 September 2020 and finishing on 31 August 2023 this is a three year project whereby 42 VET staff and 540 students from five countries will form six D4 Entrepreneurship Clubs and participate in Design Thinking projects aimed at developing new, innovative, creative, entrepreneurial education. VET students will have the opportunity to develop innovative ideas and ‘Pitch’ solutions to solve real-world challenges. Staff from the Business Incubation Centre will act as a source of expertise in developing a transnational Design Thinking competition and independently evaluate the project. Intellectual outcomes will include two D4 Entrepreneurship toolkits, one aimed at implementing Design Thinking methodologies with VET students and the other aimed at wider staff development and roll out of Design Thinking across different vocational sector and student levels. As well as Certificates of attendance all participating VET students will receive Europass recognition. Longer term it is anticipated that formal qualifications in implementing Design Thinking methodologies will be available for VET staff (facilitators) and VET Students (practitioners) Four transnational meetings, three Blended Mobilities and two Joint Staff Training event will be hosted in each of the five partner countries ensuring staff and students gain transnational experience.
We wanted to promote Entrepreneurial thinking and practice amongst students and give staff some resources to help achieve that. The purpose of the 4D Entrepreneurship project was to strengthen VET staff competencies in embedding Design Thinking in the curriculum and for VET students to apply Design Thinking methodologies to real-world challenges and innovate new ideas through Problem-Based-Learning thereby creating value, and consider self-employment as a viable work career. 4D Entrepreneurship primary project objectives were: 1. To work collectively as a network of 4D Entrepreneurship partners 2. Increase 4D Entrepreneurship partner capability to operate transnationally increasing staff and student mobility opportunities. 3. Investigate, share and confront ideas, practices and methods deployed by entrepreneurs transnationally. 4. Develop new careers guidance and learning pedagogy.
We applied for this project because we identified a need to promote Entrepreneurial and Design Thinking amongst staff and students. VET students are taught specific technical skills but we identified a need for innovative, creative and entrepreneurial thinking exists across all subject areas. Each participating college agreed that the 4D principle - Dream, Dare, Design and Do - would be useful to develop and implement in the delivery of their provision. Context and objectives Some argue that entrepreneurs, and for that matter leaders, are ‘made not born’ and the merits of this statement is hotly debated amongst academics, business leaders and wider society across Europe and beyond. What is not in question is that entrepreneurship skills can be developed in an educational setting as well as in the real world-of-work, and the earlier and more often they are practiced the better individuals are in deploying them. Generally the terms Enterprise and Entrepreneurship are interchangeable within the educational context, however a distinct difference can be drawn. An enterprising curriculum benefits students by developing inter-personal or transversal skills. ‘It combines creativity, originality, initiative, idea generation, design thinking, problem solving, innovation, expression, communication and practical action.’ To that end, VET Colleges design, deliver and facilitate a broad range of curriculum based activities aimed at developing enterprise skills. Entrepreneurship on the other hand focuses on ‘the application of enterprise behaviours, attributes and competences into the creation of cultural, social or economic value. This can, but does not exclusively, lead to new venture creation.’ It is this transition between the development of interpersonal skills (enterprise) and the application of these skills to create economic value (entrepreneurship) that this project seeks to confront and contribute to regional, national and European Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA).