BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES While during the past years, the main activity towards promoting innovation was investments in R&D, nowadays a broader view needs to be taken of all potential activities within which innovation occurs. Innovation does not refer only to science and technology; it may also refer to changes in business organization and management, workplace organization and external relations. Within this framework, innovation is vital in the workplace because it gives companies an edge in penetrating markets faster and provides a better connection to developing markets, which can lead to bigger opportunities and, therefore, to a sustainable business growth. SEAL project focuses on promoting intrapreneurial skills and mindsets in European SMEs’ employees in order to support employers and employees respond to the challenges that today’s innovation models and the “Entrepreneurial Economy” bring to human resources and its links to SMEs’ competitiveness. These challenges require new strategies to be designed and applied, and SMEs can harness the potential of in-house innovation and entrepreneurship processes. These strategies involve training and development of entrepreneurial skills and mindsets, which will enable the process of transforming opportunities into value. PARTICIPANTS In order to meet the project’s objectives, at least 10 SMEs per piloting country, including their employers, managers and employees, will be involved in the project’s activities. Other participants that will be also involved are VET trainers and representatives of VET organizations, representatives of local and national public authorities and policy makers. ACTIVITIES & METHODOLOGY SEAL project is built on a bottom-up approach, involving employers and employees around a comprehensive process covering the components of research and analysis, piloting and evaluation and exploitation & policymaking. During the 24 months of the project’s duration, partners, participants and potential end-users will embark into a challenging journey that will start with the research of the current needs for the development of intrapreneurial skills and mindsets along with the collection of relevant good practices from all over Europe. The findings from this procedure will serve SEAL project as the basis for the development of the relevant training curriculum and the training course for the development of intrapreneurial skills. Practice related activities will then be collaborative promoted and supported by piloting actions that will enable participating SME’s to exploit the full potential of the SEAL project’s results and outputs. Mainstreaming will be encouraged by the Manual & Toolkit for VET trainers / organizations and policy makers as well as showcase of the positive effects generated through the piloting of the activities in real settings and the catalogue of entrepreneurial winning ideas translating the unleashed potential of employees’ entrepreneurial skills. RESULTS & IMPACT SEAL approach, activities and outputs will contribute for: 1. improving the level of key competences and skills of SMEs’ employees, in what concerns the intrapreneurial and transversal skills, relevant for their personal, social and professional development and growth; 2. promoting and strengthening the European lifelong learning area, by contributing to the dissemination, multiplication and replication of the use of European transparency and recognition tools; 3. endowing managers and/or human resources managers of SMEs of knowledge and tools to successfully access and promote the entrepreneurial mindset and skills of their employees, essential for the promotion of competitiveness and smart growth of companies.
Considering the importance of intrapreneurship for SME development, we realised that there was a lack of initiatives at European level for training and developing employers’ and employees’ skills, which prevented employees’ development and the organizational growth of SMEs. Within OECD countries, SMEs’ employees participate in formal training activities to only 50% than employees in larger companies . One of the main reasons for this lack of participation in training is the relevant high cost. However, SMEs can promote the development of intrapreneurial skills and innovation through in-company projects. In light of this, we drafted the SEAL project with the aim to motivate SMEs to strategically plan training opportunities for fostering the development of their employees’ intrapreneurial skills through an innovative and interactive training curriculum and training course. Through the project we wanted to develop innovative solutions for SMEs to develop their employees’ intrapreneurial skills and mindsets, in particular by creating an in-depth knowledge on the state of the art of intrapreneurship in Europe, develp and test a training methodology that can be applied by SMEs to foster their employees' intrapreneurial skills.
The project was born in consideration of the fact that innovation is vital in the workplace because it gives companies an edge in penetrating markets faster and provides a better connection to developing markets, which can lead to bigger opportunities and, therefore, to a sustainable business growth. In order to achieve that it is important that employees develop an entrepreneurial mindset, which is needed within organisations as much as outside to set new vision, disrupt ways of doing things, anticipate change, and solve problems that will better business culture. This is what is called intrapreneurship. Despite the need for SME development, relevant data collected before the project confirmed the lack of initiatives for training and developing employers’ and employees’ skills, to hinder employees’ development (up/reskilling) and the organizational growth of SMEs. The SEAL project addressed these needs, with the aim to motivate SMEs to strategically plan training opportunities for fostering the development of their employees’ intrapreneurial skills through an innovative and interactive training curriculum and training course.