This is a capacity building initiative involving 5 EU partners (of which 4 HEIs) from Bulgaria, Greece, Finland and UK, and 10 Partner Country (PC) universities: 4 from India, 2 from Philippines, 2 from Nepal and 2 from Sri Lanka.Its overall objective is to build the capacity of PC HEIs to embed graduates' employability in their core activities and to facilitate the development of student talent through co-curricular and extra-curricular innovation activities involving key stakeholders, with a view to contributing to youth employment, inclusive growth and sustainable development.The project has the following specific objectives:-To support the uptake and mainstreaming of entrepreneurship education and innovation training in PC HEIs and to promote the integration of talent development into research and innovation activities in collaboration with external stakeholders (enterprises, non-profits, public sector)-To create sustainable institutional structures and ICT tools enabling student co-creation in research and innovation and stakeholder co-creation in talent development-To build PC HEIs’ capacities for delivering innovation and entrepreneurship training in view of building students’ employability skills.The capacity building intervention has three key dimensions: - enabling an institutional culture of strategic planning and change in the direction of improving the relevance of education- launching Talent Co-Creation Labs for co-curricular and extracurricular live projects combining student and stakeholder co-creation in innovation and engaging students with the world outside the university- developing tools and teaching resources to support staff and faculty implementing the new tasks.All dimensions seek to enable a re-design of students’ learning experience, introduce a challenge-driven learning model, improve graduates’ employability skills, strengthen PC HEIs’ interactions with business, and involve external stakeholders in student talent development.
The INNOTAL project aims at building the capacity of universities in the Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka and India to embed graduates' employability in their core activities and to facilitate the development of student talent through collaborative activities and innovation projects with external stakeholders, with a view to contributing to youth employment.The partnership combines the expertise of 4 EU HEIs in Bulgaria, Greece, Finland and the UK, a small enterprise from Bulgaria, 4 HEIs in India, 2 HEIs in the Philippines, 2 HEIs in Nepal and 2 HEIs in Sri Lanka.The following key results were achieved:-INNOTAL Talent Labs were created in all Partner Country (PC) HEIs. They provide shared space where students, academics and external stakeholders collaborate on innovation projects and trainings relevant to industry needs, and co-create experiential and practical entrepreneurial learning for students in support of graduates’ employability. Despite the difficulties related to the Covid-19 pandemic, over 60 collaborative activities were piloted in the Labs, involving over 3600 students, faculty members and external stakeholders. The Talent Labs were integrated into the host university structures and continue their operation. To promote the role of volunteering for employability and skills, the Talent Labs include Volunteering Centres.-To further facilitate communication between external stakeholders, academia and students, an online innovation management platform was launched. Registered users can share and discuss collaboration ideas, while university admins can turn these ideas into actual projects. As of Jan 2022, 1356 students & faculty, and 301 external stakeholders are registered. 335 ideas were proposed and 41 projects are in various stages of development.-To train the first cohort of staff and students for effective engagement in the Labs, transnational trainings for 84 PC staff members and 232 PC students were organized online. They focused on entrepreneurship skills, innovation and technology transfer management, mentoring, and project management (traditional and agile). Local trainings were also organized through the Talent Labs. Students were further motivated for an entrepreneurial career through a transnational Business Idea Pitching Competition, in which 86 PC students (28 teams) competed.-To nurture a process of improvement in the graduates’ employability promotion and innovation capacity in the PC HEIs and promote awareness and internal dialogue, the partners collaborated to develop context-sensitive strategic documents for each institution and to strengthen entrepreneurship education.-Links with external stakeholders were strengthened through Talent Lab activities and stakeholder consultations and led to longer-term agreements.The concept of co-creation of student talent, whereby students, academics and external stakeholders work together on common projects, was an innovation in the PC HEIs and a welcome addition to the existing traditional forms of student exposure to the world of work requirements, such as internships, guest lectures and job fairs. This concept contributed to the promotion of a more holistic approach of embedding student employability objectives in different university functions. PC HEIs focused on building entrepreneurial ecosystems in which entrepreneurship is approached as a process of networking and creating synergies among different stakeholders.The project exploited synergies with the initiatives of industry and public actors. Work continues post project with support from key players such as Confederation of Indian Industry, Sri Lanka National Enterprise Development Authority and the Sri Lanka University Grants Commission, Govt. of Telangana, Govt. of Gujarat and relevant industries.