About the Smart UP project

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are indisputably important for economic growth in Europe, as they account for 85% of new jobs created annually and 66% of total employment in the private sector. Therefore, the quality of training and support for new and existing entrepreneurs plays a key role in achieving intelligent, sustainable and integrative growth.

Business failure is increasingly recognized as a major issue in entrepreneurship education, and for good reason: more than half of European companies do not survive for more than 5 years.

To remedy this, the Smart-UP project will provide entrepreneurs in the early phase and established SME owners with the knowledge and skills they need to recognize and interpret early warning signals for corporate crises and to take corrective measures in good time to facilitate growth or survival in unpredictable or adverse situations.

For this we develop the following resources:

INTERVENTION FRAMEWORK: This comprehensive but accessible digital document, which was developed in cooperation with our university partner, provides up-to-date knowledge about financial and non-financial early warning signals of corporate crises and shows possibilities for detection and intervention.

CURRICULUM AND TRAINING RESOURCES: Including a curriculum, learning objectives, lesson plans, assessment guides and access to a wide variety of original teaching content in digital format.

ONLINE COURSE: This course is based on the training resources and is optimized for computers, tablets and smartphones.

ASSESSMENT APP: Comprehensive crisis assessment for SMEs.

Our main target group are start-ups and established companies, to whom we provide the knowledge and skills necessary to recognize and interpret early warning signals for corporate crises and to take corrective measures in a timely manner in order to grow or survive in unpredictable or adverse situations to enable. We also train advisory and educational institutions in order to increase the quality of advice with regard to corporate crises.

By improving the skills and attitudes of business consultants, we will not only impact the effectiveness of entrepreneurship training for individual trainees and groups, but also be able to generate waves of change in terms of entrepreneurship teaching in VET as a whole .

At the national level, the project will have an impact on the entrepreneurship VET sector by showing how it can and must adapt its offerings to reflect the need for today's entrepreneurs and SMEs to have improved skills in order to grow and survive even when the economic context is turbulent or uncertain.

At the international level, the project will have a positive impact on the ongoing work of the EU bodies to develop robust yet practical frameworks for skills development, particularly in the field of entrepreneurship. The EntreComp, DigComp, DigCompOrg and DigCompEdu frameworks will be reference points throughout the project to help us understand how we can bring more structure and transparency to the training we offer.