In fact, one of the answers is already clear. Growth and jobs should be created by developing the competencies of the Scandinavian students to work innovatively and entrepreneurial to enable them to participate as innovative resources in the Scandinavian micro-enterprises.
The goal is to make 1,050 students and 225 companies participate in the project, and to create 42 new jobs in the project period.
Background – the micro-enterprises are under pressure
The future demands innovation, and Scandinavian businesses experience a lot of pressure to make production more efficient and to strengthen their competitive performance. Therefore, they focus on, and require, employees with innovative competencies.
Small businesses and start-ups in particular experience challenges with development and innovation. They are often characterised by having limited resources as to finances and knowledge, and have no tradition or experience of co-operating with knowledge institutions.
At the same time, the micro enterprises find it hard to recruit manpower, since highly educated people rarely see those enterprises as an obvious career path. Instead, their focus is on bigger enterprises. The problem is only underlined further during the current situation with emerging shortage of labour.
Scandinavian Growth Creators will therefore help increase both the number of businesses with competencies within business development and the number of enterprises that receive direct input for implementation of innovation and business development processes.
We need to cross the border so as not to lose our Scandinavian competitive power
Mr. Erik Løvgren Brejner, Head of entrepreneurship and business relations and Student Incubator at VIA University College, is looking forward to working with Scandinavian Growth Creators and to be part of the joint Scandinavian project:
”We must work on making the small and newly established enterprises operate and grow in an inclusive and sustainable way in Scandinavia, and we must help them develop new ideas, products and services so they can develop and strengthen their competitive position”, says Erik Løvgren Brejner, and continues:
”In simple terms, we must cross the Scandinavian borders so as not to lose our competitive power. By doing that, we need to activate our talented students to get employed to use their innovative and entrepreneurial tools to make them become innovative resources in the Scandinavian micro-entreprises. Because, the target groups of this project are both small and newly established enterprises in the Öresund-Kattegat-Skagerrak region, and students from the higher educations”.
Scandinavian Growth Creators is a three-year project running from 1 September 2019 until 31 August 2021.
Partners
VIA University College is the Lead partner of the project.
Other partners are:
Erhvervsakademi Dania (Dania Academy, Denmark), Erhvervsakademi MidtVest (Academy Midwest, Denmark), AAU Innovation and Research Support (Aalborg University Denmark), CLL Campus Varberg (Sweden), Drivhuset (Sweden), Chalmers University (Sweden) and Connect Väst (Sweden)
Contributors
Contributors to Scandinavian Growth Creators are the ”Interreg Oresund-Kattegat-Skagerrak” (The Scandinavian Cross-border Cooperation) and The European Regional Development Fund (The European Union). The grant totals 1,170,559 Euro.
The project falls under the “Interreg Öresund-Kattegat-Skagerrak” (The Scandinavian cross-border Cooperation) key action area: Occupation.