INMA.- Innovation Management Agents
CALL: Transfer Project of Innovation Leonardo Da Vinci
LENGTH: 24 months
STARTING DATE: October 2010
RESOLUTION NUMBER: 2010-1-ES1-LEO05-21047
1. PARTNERS
Promoter entity: DOCUMENTA, Spain
Partner entities:
DIMITRA Institute of Training and Development, Greece
CEEI – Business Innovation Center, France
WPBS – The West Pomeranian Bussiness School, Poland
GTIR – Intelligent and Responsible Territorial Management, Spain
2. SUMMARY
One of the priority objectives of the EU is supporting growth based on job creation and knowledge. Within this framework, from the Lisbon Strategy, there are some challenges to be achieved:
- To respond to globalization making European economy more competitive.
- To support reforming programmes of states facilitating the exchange of “Good Practices”.
- To try to reconcile the requirements of growth and competitiveness with the social cohesion and sustainable development ones, essential features of the European model.
This project seeks to give an answer to the aforementioned points through the transfer of a new European job profile that showed its great employability of individuals when it was first tested. Absorption capacity is assured for this profile, having into account that R+D investment increased by 8,1% in 2008.
Moreover, it does it in response to two detected needs that are being aggravated by the current crisis:
- 90% of EU firms are SMEs. Many of them lack of R+D departments or funds to maintain them so innovation is introduced relatively slowly, constraining competitiveness. The generated profile aims to work externally with several firms (networking with other agents). In doing so, it is possible to link universities with firms and leading to lower fees in the building of a knowledge-based Europe.
- Innovation and new technologies sectors are men predominating, representation of women being still low. With the current profile and its transfer, a U-turn is intended to make within the innovation field (equating innovation with knowledge and exchange, not only with new technologies, as EU recommends). In addition, it is expected to promote women participation in that sector, facilitating their incorporation and also letting women with certain degrees access to positions that due to oversupply makes it impossible. Most of the times they end up working in posts below their professional skills (for example Management and Administration). It is believed that, with the current crisis situation, many women who were unemployed will enter the labour market in order to palliate the effects of the crisis in the household economy.
3. GENERAL OBJECTIVE
In the same line of the aforementioned needs, the project objectives are:
1 – To enhance and exploit a new academic profile with demonstrated results in its previous trial phase that helps to:
A. Promote incorporation of women (main objective audience of the project) in the innovation area, in which they are under-represented.
B. Facilitate certain profiles, which supply of graduates exceeds market demand, the incorporation into the labour market by completing their training with the defined profile.
C. Facilitate the transfer of the European profile “Innovation Agent” to partner states and then facilitate its direct exploitation in other European countries with the training tools and the 2.0 social community.
2- To help to reduce individual investment costs of European SMEs in the innovation field, thus facilitating a knowledge-based Europe and competitiveness between SMEs. Consequently, innovation agents will work externally reducing the cost of having to create and maintain a specific department.3- To promote contact and exchange between universities and firms, transferring theoretical developments to the business environment through work performed by agents, as bridges between the two sectors and the two national networks to be created (network of organizations and network of agents that support each other through the planned virtual community)
4. OBJECTIVE GROUP
Innovation and new technologies sectors are men predominating, representation of women being still low. With the current profile and its transfer, a U-turn is intended to make within the innovation field (equating innovation with knowledge and Exchange, not only with new technologies, as EU recommends). In addition, it is expected to promote women participation in that sector, facilitating their incorporation and also letting women with certain degrees access to positions that due to oversupply makes it impossible. Most of the times they end up working in posts below their profesional skills (for example Management and Administartion).
It is believed that, with the current crisis situation, many women who were unemployed will enter the labour market in order to palliate the effects of the crisis in the household economy.
