Background information

‘To bring Europe back to growth and create new jobs, we need more entrepreneurs.’ A central quote in the Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan of the EC. It not only aims to facilitate the creation of new businesses, but also to create a much more supportive environment for existing entrepreneurs to thrive and grow. The Creative Industry has always been an entrepreneurial and conducive environment for start-ups. In addition the media sector is in full transition due to fast developments in the information and communication technology. The development of the Creative Industry showing above-average growth rate. That exceeds the average growth of the overall economy over that period and it creates new jobs. (Monitor Creatieve Industrie 2014, iMMovator NL and Power 2011). Being at the crossroad between arts, business and technology, the Creative Industry occupies a strategic position to trigger spill-overs and innovation in other industries. In the Netherlands this opportunity is made to policy (Topsectoren Beleid, Crossover Works #5, Feb. 2016). This generates additional stimuli and impetus for creating innovative start-ups and existing companies and infusing new ideas in more tradition-oriented companies (De Maeyer, 2015).

Targetgroups

In this project we will investigate, 3 groups: 

  • young entrepreneurs;
  • (employees in the) companies with growth potential or growth ambition and
  • female entrepreneurs.

Research shows that after 5 years of entrepreneurship, young entrepreneurs in general are facing common problems with their role in the company. What are their strengths and what choices do they need to, or should they make?
The 2nd target group are (the people in) the companies who want to develop but do not know in which direction. Research by the social partners in the EU (Intergraf / Uni (2010)) shows that the companies need to acquire specific skills that make them more versatile and future-proof. 
The 3rd group are the female entrepreneurs. ‘Women constitute 52% of the total European population but only 1/3 of the self-employed or of all business starters in the EU. (…) When establishing and running a business, women face more difficulties than men, mainly in access to finance, training, networking, and in reconciling business and family. Potential women entrepreneurs should be made aware of business support programmes and funding opportunities’ (EC, COM 537 (2012). Given its international manifestation and prevalence, this problematic context and challenge justifies an approach that aims at sustainable approaches and deliverables for transnational use.

Activities

Companies, entrepreneurs and employees will start to develop. To support them and give direction, (desk) research and translating further refinement of information is necessary. By mapping the developments in the sector until 2026 and translate them into company profiles, which are positioned on the timeline between 2016 and 2026 per 2-year period, a development model by business type will evolve. The critical competences needed in this particular profile in that period of time, can then be described and those competences subsequently will be tailored to the specific needs of the 3 target groups. For the Creative Industry (particularly the communications sector) much information is available, but never mapped in a practical way. General information on trends and competences in the 21st century is available, but not linked to the developments in the Creative Industry in the mentioned time frequencies.
This information will be used to:
Develop and distribute multichannel, multilingual training materials to support them in making their ambition real;
Develop and communicate a scan to assist the users in acquiring better understanding of their individual strengths and points of growth as entrepreneur/manager; 
Develop an awareness tool to make the users aware of their own skills/competence gaps.

Output

Therefore the output is aimed at:
1. Individuals or companies belonging to the 3 groups
2. Training institutes, VET&HE and other (commercial) training institutes
3. Students & alumni of the institutes under 2., of which alumni have a direct link with the target groups Young entrepreneurs and Female entrepreneurs.
4. Social partners, who can use the information to inform their members and encourage them to develop themselves, like employers and employees.
5. EGIN; this network for VET&HE, universities and other stakeholders in the Creative Industry, supports this project and uses the content as input for their annual conferences.
 
During and after completion of the project, first of all the partner institutes, the social partners and EGIN will use  the developed materials. After that, other VET and HE institutions in the participating countries and other EU countries will follow. Individuals and companies that can access the E-scan and awareness tool independently and hence can make the step to training activities with learning material to be developed in the project.