The objective of ARIEES were to help universities (and potentially adult training centres) to improve: 1) their entrepreneurship courses by infusing impact investment know-how and 2) to upgrade the digital competences of lecturers/trainers to ensure that the impact investment knowledge can be properly infused into the learners while 3) certifying competences and boosting the quality of entrepreneurship trainers. This was done by developing: • Result 1 – Acquiring responsible & impactful investment cours • Result 2 – Webinars as pilots for the course (for students, startups and investors) • Result 3 – Train the trainers webinars with digital education pedagogical innovations • Result 4 – Digital micro-credential system development (based on EntreComp/DigComp) • Result 5 – Networking platform: Impact investment Hub ARIEES achieved the following priorities: Priority 1 - HE: Supporting digital capabilities of the higher education sector Priority 2 - HORIZONTAL: Environment and fight against climate change Priority 3 - HE: Rewarding excellence in learning, teaching and skills development
Fast paced innovations are good and needed worldwide indeed and the global start-up ecosystems are exceeding all expectations to this end. Moreover, as the entire world is moving towards a more sustainable & fairer business & social ecosystem, so should entrepreneurs (EU Commission, 2021, GIIN, 2020) otherwise they risk not being able to reach investment. To this end, the concept of impact investment appeared (investment in startups that produce environmental and social benefits) and it is gaining a big momentum un the startup scene (IRIS, 2020). As startups are the becoming the backbone of the EU economy in terms of employment and innovation (EUROSTAT, 2020), a massive attention should be set on developing impact investment capabilities into the next generation entrepreneurs. Furthermore, as university spin-offs and graduate-led startups are the hold the biggest propotion of share in the EU market (67.8% - EUROSTART, 2020), entrepreneurship education at the higher education level should therefore include impact investment as key competence for their students. Lecturers (i.e. higher education) or trainers (i.e. adult education) should possess the full range of digital competences facilitated by the DigCompEdu framework.