EcoAction's Vision
To strengthen the involved universities’ entrepreneurial role, exploiting the market value of their advanced innovation potential, transferring knowledge and technologies into business value to contribute directly to economic development.
Attract the best students and professors into the fields with future practical and business relevance and setting up an overall entrepreneurial university development strategy and applying it at the 5 HEIs.
Specific objectives
Improve! Institutional excellence – augmenting the competency of the participating universities by creating, cross-referencing and making interoperable the existing knowledge pools. EIT manufacturing knowledge base is also integrated. To make improvement and impact sustainable, structural changes are institutionalized.
Boost! Efficiently facilitating companies and start-ups by improved knowledge of the individual universities. It includes businesses serviced locally and also based on inter-connectivity of the partners. The EIT knowledge community will also be integrated.
Extend! Impacting the local ecosystem – the ultimate objective is to have impact of the universities beyond its institutional borders. Therefore, actions related to ecosystem development will be achieved, involving policy makers, science parks, incubators, technology transfer offices of the respective regions.
Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences, SeAMK, coordinator, lead partner.
Multidisciplinary HEI, rated the best by graduating students in 2020 and 2021, awarded the Quality Label for Excellence in 2022 by FINEEC; excels in digital manufacturing, business transfers, and growth entrepreneurship; longitudinal research on student entrepreneurial intentions unique globally; with world-class manufacturing simulation and virtual reality skills.
UNI Óbuda, Budapest, in charge of WP7
The fourth best Hungarian HEI in the Times Higher Education (THE) 2023 ranking. In the 2022 round, ÓE won the highest grant amount in the Erasmus Creditmobility (KA171) application, coordinated and submitted by the International Education Office. The institution has 7 technology faculties, more than 11,000 students (almost 1000 international) - major technical university in Hungary, to advance key research areas such as AI, robotics, bioengineering, and space science.
FH Voralberg, University of Applied Sciences, in cooperation with Service Center “startupstube”.
One of Austria's leading research universities; Researchers collaborate with local, national, and international businesses; studies and research are intertwined; ICT-enabled business process and product disruption is becoming more common; technology-driven; applied research focuses on reorganizing business processes and products.
University Institute of Studies on Migration, Comillas –IUEM
The institution promotes research and postgraduate training in diverse technological fields by participating in specific projects of interest to industry and government; a non-profit organization that strives for flexibility and pragmatism; largely funded by corporate projects. The university hopes to share its best practices in technology and knowledge transfer.
University Pforzheim
Pforzheim University has a focus on business, design, and engineering. The university has a strong emphasis on practical and applied education, and it offers a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs in these fields. Pforzheim University also has a vibrant startup ecosystem, with a number of initiatives and resources available to help students and alumni launch their own businesses. For example, the university has a startup incubator and accelerator program, which provides mentorship, office space, and funding to help new companies get off the ground. Additionally, the university offers a variety of entrepreneurship courses and workshops, as well as networking events and competitions to connect students with potential investors and partners.
https://www.hs-pforzheim.de/en/
Pannon Business Network Association, Szombathely, RTO (PBN).
PBN is EIT Manufacturing Hub in HU. PBN's department, am-LAB Digital Innovation Hub is a service centre focused on applying and presenting cutting-edge manufacturing technologies to develop smart end-user products in close collaboration with key customers; aims to provide manufacturing companies with knowledge and access to digital technologies such as collaborative robots, indoor drones, autonomous robots, hololens, virtual twinned, 3D modelling, 3D printing and sensor technology. am-LAB had 1600 students and 250 companies visit it.
https://www.pbn.hu/main.php?Lang=EN
UBI Executive Business School, Covilhã, as RTO (UBI BS)
In collaboration with University Beira Interior (PT) and with entities from various fields such as business associations (AEBB - Business Association of Beira Baixa, NERGA - Business Center of the Region of Guarda, and ANIL) and with companies, multinationals and the most important based in T. UBIExecutive is born out of the formation of AIFABI - Association for Innovation and Training, with UBI and their partners.