The common challenge of the MEVINO project is the increase of regional SMEs’ innovation activities through a more effective delivery of professional entrepreneurial support for potential innovative entrepreneurs and innovative start-ups. Fostering innovative entrepreneurship with public funding and public guidance for entrepreneurs contributes to a thriving economy and to the reduction of unemployment rate. All four consortium partners are responsible for designing and delivering entrepreneurial support in their regions. There are highly experienced and less experienced partners in this project proposal. By following the twinning advanced methodology all entrepreneurial activities of the partner organisations and their experiences will be shared in a structured way following the 4+1 Phase Model which is successfully applied by the MEVINO partner KOMPASS since years. The Model and the guidebook provide the theoretical and scientific foundation in terms of knowledge, competency and skills, needed by a Business Advisor in start-up consultation. Peer reviews of the current entrepreneurial support services provided by the partner organisations and the peer learning process with elaboration of the joint Design Options Paper with individual improvement measures for the 4 partner organisations will follow the 4+1 Phase Model. The project will gather the activities, approaches, Good Practices depending on partners’ post experiences in different applications of their entrepreneur support activities in the MEVINO GP pool where all partners can find something to import and implement in their own region. Considerable impact of this project will be generated through improvement of the entrepreneurship support model in partner organisations. The elaborated improvement measures as part of the Design option paper will be implemented after the end of the MEVINO project and MEVINO partners will stay in contact during implementation for exchanging their experiences in implementation.

The project aims to create skills on the topic of project management (PM) and intends to do so using the concept of Edutainment in depth. To do this, it was decided to unite the world of the PM and that of the Board Games: this combination aims to facilitate the learning of the concepts of the PM but intends to do it through a new model, not only through the game, but using a game in which the players interact in a common space and do it in person, ergo endowed with a very marked social component.The PM, today, is a competence that has a very strong relevance in almost all fields and is increasingly requested by people who do not have to become real Project Managers. This is because it includes skills that are transversal to all sectors and is therefore a subject that is perceived as a fundamental and basic element on which to build the rest of the expertise of a member of the organization, be it public, private or non-profit.The use of the Board Game, however, is back in the spotlight after a period of torpor and the data indicate them as a phenomenon of massive and inter-generational interest, especially for young people who discover them as a personal relationship together with the digital social networks.The PMBoG project aims to use this new renaissance of Board Games to create a game that regards the PM and legitimate the dynamics of this discipline, and intends to do this through the interaction between players/learners through the rules of a board game. The PMBoG project will address the complex nature of Project Management by allowing professional adults to manage situations where not only PM’s theory is relevant but where also a deep understanding of the structure underlying the dynamics of projects can play a crucial role for the correct management of resources and ultimately for a successful completion of an endeavor in terms of time, budget and result quality. Simultaneously, the project will extend and develop the competences of management educators and other personnel who support adult learners, with the purpose of developing a learning pathway that will certify Project Management as an essential skill with transversal value.To achieve the objectives of the project, we will combine a hybrid-style of education:- A crash-course on PM using the traditional analytical tools (e-books, papers etc.)- The development of Interactive Learning Environments (ILEs) based on simulation models that provide meaningful insights about Project Management -The development of a board game that will incorporate every element of the previous results and translate them into a scenario that will allow the participants to experience a learning process that not only delivers facts/information but allows them to understand Project Management in their own terms and find their own solutions.The strategic partnership envisages that the impact of the project will be:For the partners of the project, the impact will take the form of a strengthened cooperation and with different scopes and experiences. At the same time it will strengthen the role of the participating partners both in their respective countries and in the countries of all the participants, as the project will bring cutting-edge research and awareness campaigns closer to students and citizens. Simultaneously, the project partnership will try to address the gaps in the research: the design and implementation of a course targeted to educators of Project Management and Professionals and secondly, inform the academic community on the gap of game-based learning with regards to the assessment of the learning progress.For the participants, the new course will provide an innovative type of education, which is more student-centered and not overly reliant on the traditional style of education. This innovative education will allow the participants to achieve competences such as the ability of time management, budget management, negotiation skills, creating and delivering presentations, relationship management, risk management and using technology effectively. These competences will allow them to deal with complex decisions and decision making processes in their current and future careers in private and public organizations and provide insights into the complexity and the effort required to achieve a unique progress in a highly competitive global environment.Furthermore, the PMBoG project will provide to educators and professionals a range of tools that have high transferable value since every aspect in life can be thought and managed in terms of Project Management. Finally, the PMBoG project will bring the participants in touch with work performed by the partners and will connect them with other facets of the European culture. Last but not least, the partnership aims at bringing elements of pure fun in academic and research institutions and the corridors of professional companies.

"There is a strong awareness that new types of skills are necessary if companies and public organizations are to face successfully the immensely complex and interconnected situations that are increasingly being witnessed. Let’s consider as an example the recent Covid-19 pandemic, whose understanding has undergone various interpretations and has provided for a lot of confusion in data understanding regarding the number of infected people per day, number of deaths and recoveries, etc., notwithstanding the fact that an epidemic has a typical behaviour over time (which depends on its peculiar aspects). In other words, making sense of phenomena requires not only the capability to interpret data but to interpret the behaviour of the system underlying the generation of that data. In other words, we need to move from just the understanding of symptoms to the capability to understand the root causes, without “guessing” them (as it basically happens with stochastic methods), but by referring them to a systemic structure. This realization has entered the public limelight and companies/institutions are raising their attention to the need to bridge a gap in the amount of people in the organization with such appropriate skills that could in turn also teach/educate/train other employees; these skills are not limited anymore to technical knowledge but encompass an entire pool of transversal skills that include the ability to think critically, the spirit of initiative, the ability to solve problems in groups, to share a common vision, to get away from wrong mental models and cognitive biases, the capability to differentiate between an accumulation process and the accumulation itself (i.e.: deficit and public debt) etc.: in other words, the capability to think in systems. Such types of skills may appear abstract and vague, but they are exactly what will be required if we are to face and solve successfully many of the largest issues of the 21st century. Among these issues, in this project we will apply these skills to two very important aspects needed to change the way we live everyday on this planet: sustainable development and digital transformation.Thus, the objective of the project will be to prepare and train in Systems Thinking (ST) the next generation of people that will become the trainers of tomorrow and that will be increasingly needed in public and private organizations across Europe. ST has become a key competence and can be considered as a way of thinking aimed at solving complex problems related to real-world uncertainty. It starts from the basic principle that the world is a system of highly interconnected natural, technical and social entities, hierarchically organized to produce behaviors observable by stakeholders. So, ST is a tool with which it is possible to describe a system as a whole (in other words, by explicitly addressing the various interdependencies that are acting in a system and its non-linearities), highlighting its dynamic nature and the interactions that occur among the elements of the system and avoiding any simplification and/or linearization (linear thinking has led decision makers to take linear decisions in a deeply non-linear world, hence producing huge disasters). This systemic frame of mind is based on the following fundamental notions:the ability to know how to observe and grasp the ""circular"" nature of the world in which we liveawareness of the role of the ""systems"" structure in determining the situations we facethe understanding that there are potentially unexpected consequences for the actions we takethe understanding of the presence of delays between action and consequencesthe understanding of stocks and flows dynamics (i.e.: the dynamics of accumulation processes) The project will hence build on the above mentioned initiatives and ultimately produce a completely new educational framework that sees the application of ST to two key aspects in the future development of humankind: digital transformations and the goals of the Agenda 2030. To achieve the objectives of the project the following activities will be implemented:-Teach ST skills and approach-Teach System Dynamics as the operational/mathematical declination of ST-Build and develop relevant knowledge belonging to the issues of sustainable development and digital transformation and develop the mental and mathematical models that will synthesize and analyze the knowledge-Develop interdisciplinary connections and improve activities and methods aimed at shaping ST skills and the systems approach -Create small synthetic environments where it will be possible to examine any studied content also under the influence of external conditions-Build and develop self-management skillsAt the end of the project, a pool of trainers - thus equipped with systems thinking skills - will be available and, through the project network, ready to act as systems thinking teachers/trainers to private and public organizations."

"The main strategic references of the EU suggest and address the structuring of initiatives to foster entrepreneurial mindsets through education, learning and the development of synergies between education, vocational training and the labour market. In some contexts, such as that of the upper secondary education, we are witnessing a formal take-over of these guidelines. In fact, the curriculum of the second cycle indicates as essential and transversal to all students, regardless of the type of school attended, the skills to promote and support creativity, innovation, risk-taking and, in general, the sense of initiative and entrepreneurship, and in line with these indications, the curriculum of the second cycle is committed to the implementation of actions of consequent connection with the business and labour market.The communication of the European Commission COM (2006) 33 final explicit and clear up that ""Entrepreneurship refers to a person's ability to translate ideas into action, this will include creativity, innovation and risk-taking as well as the ability to plan and manage projects in order to achieve objectives. It is a useful skill for everyone in everyday life, in the domestic sphere and in society, workers (and students) to be aware of the context in which they operate"" and in order to develop those personal qualities that support guidance in a complex system and that allow to take on the various roles of employee, of self-employed and/or of entrepreneur.Nevertheless as defined in many EC documents, the uptake and the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education in European vocational schools are still far from being satisfactory:- Entrepreneurship is not included in all parts of the VET system; - student participation is limited;- teaching methods are ineffective; - the practical element of entrepreneurship is missing and teachers are not fully competent.Under the priority selected, the project proposal is conceived in order to:- Exchange best practices at European level, in the field of entrepreneurship training, by means of business simulation and business gaming- Promote the geographical transfer of the Simulated Practice Enterprise model, as a training methodology useful for the development of entrepreneurship competencies in VET institutions and VET students;- Promote the development, transfer and implementation of business games to be linked to the ICT tools and Simulators available in the different partners Countries for the application of Simulated Practice Enterprises. Specifically, to develop business games linked to the market and competitors analysis, business planning and start-up.- Promote the acquisition of competences which will enable VET professionals to improve their teaching in an important key competence, such as the one related to Entrepreneurship, set out in the 2006 Recommendation on key competences for Lifelong learning.The objectives of the project are:- build a strategic partnership for the exchange of good practices in the field of education for entrepreneurial skills in secondary schools, with a specific focus on the experiences of simulation, businesses simulated training, practice firms, etc ...;- combine the methodology of the business game with the ICT tools available for the development of Simulated Training Enterprises (IFSCONFAO simulator), and developing a business game specifically for the start-up phase, which can significantly enhances the usability of the training pathway related to the simulated training enterprise approach, both for students and for teachers;- encourage a greater involvement of the business and labour market, involving institutions, associations, etc ... in the development of guidelines for enterprise/companies able to attract, motivate and facilitate the involvement of companies in the simulation process, clarifying and specifying the crucial role of tutoring/mentoring in the business-training of IFSCONFAO;- transfer, adapt and implement templates, tools, technologies and methods of simulation and business game for the development of entrepreneurial skills in the upper secondary education, in the partners countries;- promote the aspects of the internationalization of business and enterprises, promoting the development of transactions in the virtual market between the companies created in the context of the transnational partnershipThe project partnership is composed of qualified networks representative of the national VET systems in Italy represented by CONFAO (applicant), in Spain by IFI in Portugal by CECOA; by major development agencies and local entrepreneurship support and connection with the production systems and business activities (SFCOnfindustria in Italy, Germany and Kompass CPU Slovenia) and by advanced ICT Companies (The Business game and Isform)"