South-East European Research Centre (SEERC)

The emergence (across the EU) of a myriad of successful entrepreneurs in cultural settings different from those they originate in offers a unique opportunity to capture the specificities of internationalization and mixed embeddedness and to use this knowledge as a tool for skills development within SMEs across the EU. These LFs will offer a radically new model of establishing individual learning outcomes that better-reflect the learning needs of students and SMEs in developing international/cross-cultural capability (Fielden, 2007). A central dimension in ELIE is co-development between HE & SMEs. This offers a radical move away from both traditional inward perspectives in HE & conventional views regarding uni-directional flow of ideas from HE to SMEs towards exchange & co-creation of knowledge. This two-way process underpins the development of multi-agency (HE, SMEs, SME associations) partnership that will deliver project outputs & can provide an exemplar for future knowledge exchange.

ELIE will provide HE institutions across Europe with a new set of teaching and learning tools based upon well-founded research that will reinforce the link between studies and future sills and employment needs as well as providing accessible learning opportunities for SMEs first within the pilot countries and later across Europe to develop their levels of entrepreneurship and creative thinking.

Capturing the components of success of immigrant entrepreneurs can help define the capabilities needed by graduates & SMEs in the global marketplace. Our innovative Employability: Learning through International Entrepreneurship (ELIE) project will use action research methods to capture the lived experience of immigrant entrepreneurs and will synthesise key features of their success in a cross-cultural environment into learning frameworks (LFs) for Employability and Entrepreneurship in a cross-cultural environment suitable for delivery in formal and informal settings.