Fostering Innovation and Entrepreneurship in European VET: EU Project "From Idea to Enterprise"

The research and development of modern products and systems is coined by the increasingly important requirement to create sustainable innovation. Innovation is intimately linked with entrepreneurship. Ideas, Innovation and Entrepreneurship are considered the keys to a wealthy and sustainable economy. The best way to turn ideas into innovations is to consider key innovation factors from the earliest phases of research all along the way to products and services. Existing entrepreneurship education and training programs, however, do not take into account these early phases, but rather focus on the process of creating a new enterprise. This paper presents “From Idea to Enterprise”, a European Project that transfers the innovative “ECQA Certified EU Researcher-Entrepreneur” certified program from academic to VET level.