"“Family firms have been the invisible giants of the European economy for far too long. It is time to stand up and fulfil their true potential in Europe! Family firms are crucially important for Europe. They make a significant conribution to Europe's GNP and employment, and tend to be great innovators, with a longer-term vision.""Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, Former President of the European Commission (EC) Scope and Benefits: Around 14mln EU companies (65-85% of all EU businesses) are family businesses, contributing 50% to Europe’s GDP and more than 60 mln jobs (60% of all jobs). Our project, SPRING, aims to help EU family businesses to fulfil their potential, by offering them a complete package with the necessary training, mentoring, support and guidance in the following areas:A. Smooth succession and business continuity, accounting for multi-dimensional factors (leadership, management, governmance, ownership, legal issues), through failed and successful casesB. Strategy for growth and internationalisation, built on innovation and regeneration.C. Development of entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and interpreneurship across generations, converging the entrepeneurship and family business training content, promoting a start-up culture and an enterprising and innovation-based growth mindset within family businesses and considering other strategies besides succession (exit strategies, external investors in the company, etc.)D. Inclusive and responsible family business acts to ensure they adopt not only CSR practices but the full cycle (circular economics), to maximise value creation for all involved stakeholders, promoting inclusive entrepreneurship among the next generation members and female leaders.Main activities and outputs: Design and pilot an innovative and practical SPRING Training and Consultancy programme, jointly offered by renowned EU universities and adult training and consulting companies. This will be the first of its kind in Europe."

“One becomes an entrepreneur not by birth but by education as well as by experience” Reason of project: SCIENT developed an innovative entrepreneurship programme for PhD STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) students/graduates, giving them an insight out of the ivory tower of pure research, developing their transversal skills and providing a new professional path. The EU needs researchers who not only discover new things, but transfer knowledge to others, for maximum social and economic benefit. Scope & benefits: SCIENT through its completion achieved to enhance scientific entrepreneurship by concentrating on young researchers, the brightest minds with untapped business potential. Based on EUROSTAT data in 2010, there were more than 500,000 PhD students in EU universities, with more than 180,000 (more than 36%) STEM students. Activities: By identifying the strengths, weaknesses, existing gaps and utilising the best practices of existing entrepreneurship programmes collected through visits at local level and abroad, a unique and top-quality programme emerged. Main Outputs/results: -A consolidated report summarizing the results from 7 different countries and including a description of the state of the art and the needs' analysis conducted across Europe, aiming to identify best practices, strengths and weaknesses and success stories on entrepreneurship and accelerator programmes as well as the needs of STEM PhD students/graduates. In total 99 organisations visited across 24 EU countries and about 1100 STEM PhD students/graduates completed the online survey.-The SCIENT Training programme pilot tested in 7 countries (CY, PT, ES, IT, LT, UK, MT) with the participation of 121 pilot participants and a great number of trainers and mentors from different disciplines and with different expertise. The feedback received helped the SCIENT consortium of partners in the finalization of the SCIENT training programme, which was also translated in six different European languages (English, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Lithuanian) and is available for free on the SCIENT Online Training platform.-The SCIENT online training includes a short description of the training methodology, the trainers involved, the training agenda and of course all PowerPoint presentations for all SCIENT modules in all available languages. -Following the completion of the pilot testing seminar and the Entrepreneurship Academy/Business Competition event, where 34 PhD students/graduates had the opportunity to present their business ideas in a panel of investors, a great potential for the commercialisation of participants’ ideas and development of start-ups arose.