Industry 4.0 has now extended its focus to a broader set of technologies rather than just CPS, and to the most vital processes included in the product and production systems lifecycle, rather than just to production. In all the dialects where the Industry 4.0 language is spoken, Industrial Internet of Things, Additive Manufacturing and Robotics from the technology side and Mass Customization, Product-Service Systems and Sustainable Manufacturing from the business side always represent key cornerstones and top priority challenges. FASTEN “mission” is to develop, demonstrate, validate, and disseminate an integrated and modular framework for efficiently producing custom-designed products. More specifically, FASTEN will demonstrate an open and standardized framework to produce and deliver tailored-designed products, capable to run autonomously and deliver fast and low cost additive manufactured products. This will be achieved by effectively pairing digital integrated service/products to additive manufacturing processes, on top of tools for decentralizing decision-making and data interchange. Sophisticated software technologies for self-learning, self-optimizing, and advanced control will be applied to build a full connected additive manufacturing system. ThyssenKrupp and Embraer are two of these companies that must overcome challenges of this nature, in order to cope with an increasing demand diversity, products with shorter life cycles, and the need for supplying low volumes per order, requiring flexible solutions capable to effectively manufacture and deliver personalized products.

Climate Labs seeks to strengthen the applied research and innovation capacities of ten partner universities from Mexico, Brazil and Colombia through the design and implementation of Social Innovation Labs for mitigation and adaptation to Climate Change. In a network with Universities from Spain, France, and Italy, plus Ashoka as a non-academic expert partner, the project seeks to build interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder labs that will institutionalize the applied research and innovation for climate change in the territories the partners are inserted. In a term of three years, the project expects to train scholars, students and staff members in Latin America, who will form changemaker leader teams, design and implement labs according to the needs, strengths, challenges and characteristics of the institutions and territories they serve. In this period, each university will also implement a pilot project, get connected with international relevant networks as well as other national institutions, build the physical and virtual infrastructure of the lab, and develop strategies for the sustainability and scalability of the project. The project seeks, ultimately, to build strong and connected areas of innovation and applied research within universities impacting in the overall capacities and strategies of the partner countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Smart Sustainable Cities (SSC) represent a progression of how cities apply digital technology to serve their populations, pursue sustainable socio-economic development, and transform themselves. The urban development that leads SSC requires a growing number of competencies to work together in order to plan, design, implement and manage the ongoing transformations of the city, enabled by technological innovation. Considering the great attention the concept of SSC has reached in Latin America, our project aims at integrating it into various university courses using new teaching and learning tools, as well as developing new curricula in all levels of education process. Given the increasing number of competencies needed and its interdisciplinary characteristic, the curricula for SSC will be implemented in areas such as ICT, Business Administration, Computer Science, Engineering, Architecture and Urbanism, Urban Planning, Political Science, among others, using a collaborative and international network of selected academic institutions in Latin America and Europe. The main outputs of the project include the development, evaluation and implementation of new courses and programmes on SSC to reach students, policy makers, public managers and other members of the city administration, professionals, managers and entrepreneurs, as well as university faculty that will be trained to apply the developed ICT-based tools to their classes. Besides academic curricula and specialization programmes, the project will provide an e-learning platform filled with a Massive Online Open Course on SSC. The main impacts of the project are to improve the quality of learning and teaching tools, methodologies and pedagogical approaches in the Latin America region, increase the employability and competitiveness of the students, and for the faculty members to increase the quality of their classes by using new learning and teaching tools and new content, as well as promoting life-long learning.

Population growth, increased prosperity and rapid urbanization are bringing global demand for natural resources to a point increasingly beyond the Earth’s carrying capacity. Together with climate change, those pressures are causing significant environmental degradation in many parts of the planet. Latin America is particularly vulnerable. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) constitute urgent calls and drivers for higher education to be part of future generations of engaged citizens aware of their role in creating fair and healthy societies.The Change the Climate project addresses three main needs: environmental management at all levels of higher education activities, integration of environmental management with sustainability strategies and institutional quality management, and customized strategies for sustainability in education. The project’s main goal is to increase Latin-American University’s contribution to Sustainable Development, through the implementation of environmental systematic practices and quality processes in alignment with the UN SDGs, improving the management and operations of higher education institutions. The project will deliver tools and guides for environmental impact analysis and SDGs mapping in campus operations and educational activities. An environmental management system will be implemented in each partner university decreasing their environmental impact; sustainability awareness will be assessed thoughout the academic communities; strategies for sustainability in higher education will be developed for curricula improvement; and a common open online course on sustainability will be created in English, Spanish and Portuguese.The project’s impact will reach stakeholders beyond the project partnership at local, regional and national levels contributing to behavioural change for sustainable futures.

This is a project-based on cooperation between 5 European and 10 Latinamerican universities. The main objective of the Project is to integrate social innovation in academic curriculum and learning environments in Latin American Universities to promote quality improvement in academic programs through fostering competence to solve regional social problems. This implies: 1. Design and apply educational models to promote competences on social entrepreneurship and social innovation amongst university students.2. Design and offer academic strategies to develop competences on social entrepreneurship and social innovation.3. Design valuable methodological tools for academic programs to improve understanding of the community`s needs and offer inclusive, sustainable solutions for detected problems.4. Design a monitoring system to evaluate curricular development on social entrepreneurship and innovation competences.5.Design and implement institutional policies and programs for administrative, academic and support management to promote social innovation in Latin American Universities.6. Create alliances between Latin American and European Universities interested in promoting social entrepreneurship.7. Support existing social incubators in participant universities to improve links between educational tools and students learning process to foster creativity and sustainability in social projects.With these activities, the Project will achieve short and long term impact at four different targets: institutions, teachers, students, external/Social Stakeholders. Then, the Project has some specific key indicators that serve to review the progress and the impact of the actions:1.Reporting the state of art of Social Entrepreneurship in participant institutions2.Guidelines of competencies on social innovation. 3.Toolbox for teaching social innovation including methods for working with different external stakeholders (NGO’s, Companies, Communities) 4.Selection and Confirmation of pilot courses and teachers that will implement social innovation methods or activities inside their courses. 5.Teachers’ participation in the training program on how to design and implement social entrepreneurship within selected courses during the pilot period.6.Implementation and monitoring of pilot projects7.Identification and early development of institutional support actions to enhance innovation and social entrepreneurship in HEI. 8.Results and impact of pilot projects To accomplish this, there are seven important moments or milestones in the project. 1.Kick-off meeting- Mexico (Starting Point, Clarification on Tasks & Expectations)2.Valencia meeting (Progress and Difficulties of the Project)3.Teachers online training (Expectations)4.Porto Alegre’s meeting (Satisfaction and Usefulness)5.Pilot’s implementation (Progress and Difficulties)6.Talca’s meeting (Results and Impact, this meeting changed from the city of Talca to Bgotá). 7.Final Meeting (Results and Impact)By now, we have passed through all the moments mentioned above covering 8 key indicators listed before. There were changes to some of the actions conceived at the beginning. These changes were discussed with the Steering Committee, as part of our internal quality measures; and later, were discussed with our Project Officer, to grant here authorization. The changes imply an improvement in the impact and the results of the project. The previously expected impact was: the implementation of a methodology in SI and SE in 20 pilot courses, 450 students implicated, 55 trained teachers, the reinforcement of social incubators in the participant universities with an impact in the communities, and the implementation of measures for the mainstreaming of social innovation. The final impact overpassed these numbers: 70 courses, 1614 students, 56 teachers trained.