Accent Project

AccEnt - Accelerating Innovation and Entrepreneurial Excellence in Higher Education Institutes

Project description
The AccEnt project aims to boost the entrepreneurial performance of all consortium members in close collaboration with their ecosystem partners. The project focuses on improving and extending core entrepreneurial activities at three different levels: students (entrepreneurship); faculty and researchers (founders, academic spin offs); and ecosystems (scale-ups, open innovation).

AccEnt is confident that it can make a significant difference in terms of accelerating innovation and entrepreneurial excellence in HEIs across Europe.

Consortium
The consortium consists of a variety of complementary higher education institutions situated across Europe:
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (coordinator) (Greece)
Fontys University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands)
KU Leuven (Belgium)
Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (Poland)
Pablo de Olavide University (Spain)
Thomas More (Belgium)
University of Macerata (Italy).

To achieve specific targets towards knowledge triangle dynamics, the project is backed up by IDEAS Forward (Greece), a strategic valorisation partner of AUTH. 

Objective
AccEnt’s goals and philosophy are built on the belief of the relevance of third mission activities of universities for Europe’s knowledge society today and tomorrow, as well as the growing importance of inter and transdisciplinary activities, and the potential of operating systematically on a European scale.
AccEnt aims to increase the impact by improving and extending current practices, and to lift the current knowledge triangle dynamics at a European scale with relevant initiatives of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology and the Knowledge and Innovation Communities.

Further information on the project is available at this link.

IDEA TO MARKET ACCELERATION PROGRAM - WORKSHOP 1: Me, Myself and My Venture
The “Idea to Market Acceleration” program of AccEnt aims to help participants to develop their business idea into a fundable and sustainable business plan - in other words, to ‘accelerate their business’.
Participants are offered an intensive training and coaching trajectory consisting of 3 multi-day workshops taking place from October to December 2022. Workshops will combine lectures, coaching and development, and pitching activities. The program will culminate with a final pitching engaging early-stage investors. 
Over a period of 3 months, the entrepreneurial teams will be guided and coached through the process of articulating and refining their vision, and translating it into a unique resource configuration and business model that can become sustainable and scalable.
The first seminar took place virtually on the 11th and 12th of October: each team presented their business idea and were given instructions on innovation, value proposition crafting and testing.