An excellent conference with links to many ideas, documents and people who are worth watching.

From a curriculum, pedagogy and policy perspective, there is a lot of guidance out there:

QAA have appointed a chair for their review body of the 2012 QAA Enterprise and Entrepreneurship guidance. There is likely to be much more emphasis on social enterprise and intrapreneurship. The launch of the new guidance will be in January 2018 in London.

In terms of policy, there is a great deal out there. Worth following what is happening in Wales and Scotland as well as the EU and other bodies such as the UN.

EEUK have appointed a Head of Policy, Alison Price so expect more to come out of EEUK in that direction this year.

The EU website has a range of documents that cover such topics as digital citizenship to building regional ecosystems bringing universities and business together.

In terms of pedagogy, the Impact Gaps Canvas appears to offer a lot of possibilities. Likewise, the Hackathon is something that could be adopted by any institution. This intensive learning experience over two or three days could involve students across the curriculum. DCU (Dublin City University)’s 2016 example is documented here and reference to the Edvent conference input here.

In terms of skills, there is a new skills agenda for Europe at this site. It talks about working together to strengthen human capital, employability and competitiveness.

The Entrecomp guidance on entrepreneurship (and there is a handbook to come out soon) is excellent and a must for curriculum designers. This competency framework has been widely used and was very well received at the conference. All you wanted to know about entrepreneurship competency but were afraid to ask. A propos, look at threshold concept theory for some background.

In terms of organisations, the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute at London South Bank University is worth a look. N.B. the Global Challenges Institute there.

Santander Universities now partners with 81 Universities in the UK and is a great success story.

In terms of evaluation tools, the heinnovate website with the EC and the OECD have joined forces to create this tool. This is an institutional tool with a lot of potential for discussion, reflection and action.

If you are still reading this, here is a fantastic micro-finance initiative from Wildhearts Micro-Tyco – all about compassionate entrepreneurship. This might well be a must for WP and work with schools. Versatile, eloquent and simple in essence, it has already involved 40,000 people in 21 countries attracting big companies such as Deloitte (who use it for talent spotting amongst other things) and Babson College.

Next IEEC conference early September in Leeds Beckett. For more information on the conference, please just contact me.

By Dr Mike Calvert