Transcript
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The hosts welcome participants, explain the webinar format, and introduce the speakers from AG Innovate, the European Commission, the OECD, and EIT AGI. They outline the purpose of the session and what will be covered.
Hello everyone.Good afternoon.
Welcome to this information session about AG Innovate as a part of the series of information sessions that are being done for the EIT Higher Education Initiative call of 2026.I see we have quite a few people coming in, so we give a few minutes for this to stabilize before we get started.
Hi.Good to see people from different countries joining us.Feel free to share in the chat where you're coming from and a bit about yourself, which institution you represent.Just to let you know, the microphones are turned off for the participants, but you can turn on your cameras.This is just to make sure we don't have background noise during the presentation.
Hi Laura.Good afternoon.Hi Daniela.
Hello to everyone who's joining us.We're just giving a couple of minutes as colleagues are coming in.
Hi Anastasia.
Hi good to see everyone here.Welcome to this information session.This afternoon uh we're going to be talking about AG Innovate and how to use AG Innovate in your EIT AGI application.So I see still a lot of people coming in and out.I'll give it a few minutes.Please uh let us know in the chat where you're joining us from, which university or institution you represent.Good to see a lot of diversity from Finland, Turkey, Greece, Egypt.Welcome everyone.
The session today is being recorded just for the purpose of creating a summary and um uh for the purpose of this meeting.You are all automatically muted as you will see, but you can turn on your cameras.Um and if you at any point want to say something, you can raise your hand and we will unmute you.It's just because we have over 100 people joining, so it could get a bit um of background noise.Okay.I think things are stabilizing now.We have uh still some people will join us, but we can get started so we don't go over time.So my name is Flavia.I'm a part of the AG Innovate team.Here today with me uh representing the AG Innovate team, we also have Luciana Ramos and Carla Ricarte.Maybe familiar faces uh to some of you.Um this session is run by the AG Innovate team as a part of the information sessions for the EIT AGI call of 2026.
So we will go over what is AG Innovate and how you can use AG Innovate in your application.As you know, it is mandatory to have the self-assessment results submitted with your application, and we're going to talk today about how the self-assessment can inform your proposal and support your project application.So beyond the EIT Innovate team, here today we have also colleagues from the EIT AGI who can help us answer some questions that are specific to the call.So we have Rosanna Taylor here today and they will help us throughout the session.We also have representatives from the European Commission and the OECD.We have Loredana Lombardi and Michel Vike from the European Commission and we also have David Halabinski from the OECD.And last but not least, completing our team for this webinar, we have Bernhard Weber, who is our expert in EIT Innovate and is going to share his practical experience in using EIT Innovate to write an application for the
EIT AGI.So he will present how the consortium that he leads use the tool to write a proposal that was successful and funded in the last round.So he can bring this practical insights fresh from the last call for applications.
Loredana and David explain the policy background behind AG Innovate and its role in supporting higher education transformation and competitiveness. They also summarize the 2026 call, its budget, timeline, and strategic goals.
So to get started, as EIT Innovate is an initiative of the European and the European Commission and the OECD, I'm very happy to give the floor to Loredana Lombardi to say welcoming words on behalf of the European Commissionand open our webinar.So Loredana, please, the floor is yours.
Yeah, good afternoon everyone and welcome to this EIT Innovate information session for the EIT call 2026.I work in the unit managing initiative focus on education and skill for innovation in the Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture.Let's say that our action are decide to address the union skills and the startup and scale-up strategy objectives.It means to foster Europe's competitiveness by keeping people with the skills to innovate and by helping turn knowledge and research into practical solution.And higher education institution are central to this ambition, and this is where H Innovate and the EIT Higher Education Initiative can make a difference.Today H Innovate is an important tool for supporting the transformation European Higher Education, and especially for this webinar it is a mandatory element for the EIT Higher Education Initiative call for proposal.For applicants H Innovate is more than assessment exercise as it provides a starting point for identifying institutional your institutional needs, developing target credible plan for change.
Indeed the 2026 EIT Higher Education Initiative call was launched last 20 October with a total budget of 40 million.The selected projects can receive up to 1.25 million for an 18 month implementation period from May 27 to October 28 and the deadline for application is next year the 13 of January.So the objective is on skills development, institutional transformation and ecosystem partnership and this is why today's session is so relevant because exploring H Innovate's eight dimensions you will gain a better understanding on how to identify your consortium strengthsand gaps, also to set priorities and develop a convincing action plan to submit your proposal.So I encourage you to participate and take this opportunity to raise your question.So finally many thanks to Flavia and the entire H Innovate team, to Bernard, EIT colleagues for organize and moderate this session too and I wish you a productive discussion and every success in preparing your proposal and now I
give the floor my colleague David from the OECD.So David please, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much.Good afternoon everybody.It's a real pleasure to be here and the OECD is of course very happy to be involved in HE Innovate as we helped develop this with the European Commission uh many years ago.Now just as a quick bit of context I work at the Center for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities and we work with the committees that work on those topics.So there's a committee of SMEs and Entrepreneurship, Local Development, Regional Development, Tourism and then there's a whole collection of sub parties and working parties under those.And I think that's important to highlight because the tool is very valuable because it helps to connect all of these different themes.So it's a hands-on practical tool for institutions and their stakeholders to help look at these issues related to entrepreneurship, innovation and economic development and it helps them understand where they stand and it can help them identify the pathway
forward, identifying objectives and targets on how they're going to get there.So that's helping them to move from aspirations to concrete actions.And an important point I want to highlight is that this is very collaborative.And so HE Innovate is a framework and tool that brings together university leadership, faculty, students as long as well as their external stakeholders that they work with and it helps them develop a common language and common concepts andcommon objectives around how they work together on innovation and entrepreneurship.Now this is very important because at the OECD, much like in the EU, um we're seeing a renewed relevance of these issues which makes this framework and tool even more important for policy making.You know our governments are increasingly interested in traditional benefits of entrepreneurship, you know, business creation, job creation, innovation, local and regional development, but also the broader issues related to some of the the broader elements of entrepreneurship such as
developing entrepreneurial mindsets and flexibility within individuals and how they work and how they go through their career.So this flexibility and adaptability of the labor force are becoming quite central to policy discussions as governments are looking to manage industrial transformations, digitalization, and other macro trends that call for this flexibility in the labor force.Um so that's just to say it's not just about entrepreneurship in a business creation sense, but entrepreneurship in a broader sense.And so I'll just leave one final thought which is that, you know, this call is extremely important.So I'm glad to see that there are so many people interested and have joined us today uh because higher education institutions will play uh a central role in working with governments in achieving these policy objectives related to thisnew uh competitiveness agenda.So once again, I thank you for joining us today and I wish you all luck in your preparations for the call and I will pass it back to uh the moderator.
Flavia introduces AG Innovate as an evidence-based framework for entrepreneurial and innovative higher education. She explains its eight dimensions, the self-assessment survey, and how the results are displayed and interpreted.
Thank you.
Thank you, David and Loredana for this introduction on the context of AG Innovate both from the OECD and the European Commission side.Um so I will get started now with an introduction about uh what is AG Innovate, why it was created, how it can help um universities in becoming more innovative and entrepreneurial so that everyone has a context on howthe tool can be used before then handing the floor to Bernhard for the presentation about the practical usage of the tool.We will have a Q&A right after my presentation, but please feel free to type any questions in the chat uh meanwhile as well.So as already mentioned by Loredana and David Eginovate is an initiative of the European Commission and the OECD that has existed for over 10 years.It is a part of the Erasmus Plus set of tools of the European Commission and it provides an evidence-based framework for higher education institutions to become more innovative and more entrepreneurial.
We will see today different ways that Eginovate can help institutions, but there are three main points that I wanted to highlight from the start.Eginovate is key in helping institutions that use it identify its strengths and gaps across these eight dimensions that I'll introduce in a bit.It also supports institutions in creating a shared language about entrepreneurship and innovation that will then help bring together different stakeholders on a conversation on these topics and it supports strategic planning and capacity building in higher education institutions.As you all know here today, it also opens doors to EU funding opportunities such as the EIT higher education initiative.So initially to to just introduce what this framework is about, Eginovate is structured around eight key dimensions of entrepreneurship and innovation in higher education.So it covers what a higher education institution is doing in terms of entrepreneurship and innovation from its leadership, its strategic documents, from its policies of funding, of staff, and organizational capacity in general all the way to teaching and
learning, how it connects with its ecosystem and then going to how it measures the impact of the activities it does.So what this means is that when you're using Eginovate, you're looking at the institution as a whole.You're looking at what your higher education institution is doing in terms of entrepreneurship and innovation as a whole.We're not just seeing whether there is startup support center or maybe a course on entrepreneurship in one faculty, but whether the higher education institution is innovative and entrepreneurial in all of its activities.These eight dimensions can be used all of them or also depending on what you do, you can choose to focus on the dimensions that make more sense to your institution.So how can AG Innovate support change in higher education institutions?And this is beyond the EIT application, but overall how the transformation happens in higher education institutions.
There are generally four main steps that we use to say how to implement AG Innovate and I will introduce them all today.We added a step zero to this let's say pathway, which is a discovery step and this is just an initial understanding of what is AG Innovate, getting familiar with the framework, getting familiar with the tool before you startyour journey in using AG Innovate in your institution.This information session, for example, can be considered a part of step zero and discovering AG Innovate as a tool.Once you have gotten familiar with what is AG Innovate and its resources available, we start the journey with a step of reflection.This means that AG Innovate is based on self-assessment of your higher education institution.Everything in the journey stems from the results of this initial self-assessment.So the self-assessment is a survey, it's a questionnaire that has 38 questions on these eight dimensions, so four or five questions per dimension of AG Innovate and you invite people in your institution to assess these questions uh a
scale of one to five.So it's an agreement scale where people will say whether they agree or disagree with these 38 statements.Um the idea here is that each person responding to this self-assessment is bringing their point of view, is bringing their perception on the activities in your institution.So it's really important to understand that is not one centralized assessment on behalf of a university, but it is a survey that collects inputs from different members of your community.So the idea is to invite as many colleagues as possible to fulfill this self-assessment um within the call.We can talk about this later, but the more uh people you invite, the more robust your results will be because if you as a self-assessment as a perception-based exercise, if you're only inviting one person on behalf of thewhole institution, you're getting uh a very narrow picture.
So ideally you involve students, staff, uh leadership and invite those colleagues to fill in this self-assessment and reflect on where your institution is.Once you've had this first step of collecting their opinion, collecting their perception on where you are, there comes then a second step that we call reflect, which is looking at those results, reflecting at what they mean, trying todig a bit deeper to understand what's behind those uh results and discussing them within your community.So I'll share some examples here of how these results will look like.This um radar chart that you see is the summary chart that you will get once you complete your results and you'll be able to see the scores you got for each of these dimensions.So you can start a conversation on well, you see that this uh particular institution did not do so well in measuring the impact of the entrepreneurial institution.
So, perhaps what is behind that result, what can we do better and to start to uncover those results.Within a project like EIT, you can also see the different roles, how different people within your institution have voted because sometimes people within a technology transfer office or within an entrepreneurship unit will have a very different perception thanpeople like students or researchers that are not involved or not engaged in those specific activities.So, the results that you can see in the platform also show the different roles that you invited.So, in this case, for example, this institution had four different roles for different types of stakeholders invited and they can see not per individual but per role what were the scores and the differences.
The presentation shows how consortium partners can compare results, identify complementarities, and turn the self-assessment into an Innovation Vision Action Plan. It also introduces action cards, planning templates, and the cycle of implementation and reassessment.
In a project like the EIT Higher Education Initiative, you're not doing this as a single institution.You're doing this application, you're writing your proposal as a consortium, right?So, the slide here shows an example on what you can get out of AG Innovate in terms of results.So, this is an example where you have certain partners.Each of these partners took the self-assessment.So, each of these partners has the score and for each of these I mentioned.So, what I want to highlight here is how could you use these results to build your application.You're seeing here partner A, partner B, partner C.One key thing that we take from this is whenever you're comparing the results of different partners, compare them horizontally, not vertically.What I mean by this is you're not looking at who is the best at leadership and governance, but you're looking at what is partner A doing that is really good and that they can share with other partners.
What is partner B doing that they can share with other partners?The reason for this is that there's not always a comparable between institutions because there are cultural differences, there are institutional differences that you can't always just say um across the different partners who stands out in one dimension, butis ideal to see what could partner A bring to this consortium, what could partner B B bring to this consortium.So um mapping out the complementarities between the different partners will help you uh build your innovation vision action plan, your EVAP, which is your proposal for this call.Um and that's a good starting point.So in step two is where you will look at those results and reflect on them and what they mean.So a quick example here is that partner B seems to be doing really well in connecting with the entrepreneurial ecosystem, so you might want to build a proposal where partner B is showcasing um and sharing um the knowledge
that is related to the connection with the ecosystem and supporting other partners in this point.So try to find these complementarities, try to see where each partner of the consortium can bring something to this uh to this application.So after you've done this analysis of the results, that's when you start building the plan.The idea is that EIT AG Innovate is a foundation that will make sure your proposal is based in real evidence about where your institutions and your partners stand.So once you've discussed these results, it's time to start planning the activities that you'll actually do within your project proposal.Um we have some tools within EIT AG Innovate that can help you build the proposal and build the actions that you will um you will put together in your project.And uh I want to show a few of those, uh but generally you can use your own methodologies as well.
But one of the tools that can really help finding out how to bridge the results into building a proposal, writing an application are the EIT AG Innovate action cards.The AG Innovate action cards are free and available on our website.They are organized by the eight dimensions of AG Innovate and they bring proposals of what activities you could do in order to improve each of these dimensions.So let's say that you identify a few perhaps there is a common dimension where several partners struggle that you want to develop further.You could have a look at the action cards related to that dimension in order to brainstorm ideas for activities.So the card that's showing here it's just an example of a card from the dimension of leadership and governance and it proposes actions related to building an entrepreneurship board or council for the higher education institution that would bring
external stakeholders in an advisory role to the university.So it is not a copy paste exercise of taking a card and just including that in your proposal, but this is thought let's say brainstorming exercise where together with your consortium partners you can look at those cards andstart to think of ideas that could build your proposal and then adjust adapt to your context and see what makes sense.So there's a set of over 54 action cards each of them mapped with the AG Innovate dimensions and we would encourage you to after receiving your self-assessment result maybe taking the cards related to the dimensions that you wantto focus on and using them and supporting the brainstorming when you're building your application.Another let's say we have a few templates that can help you plan your actions with AG Innovate.One of them is this action planning templates.
So the action planning templates we normally use them as well so you can bring people together have a look at the action cards and start brainstorming activities that you could do in the short medium and long term.So how we use this is that you normally would print it, half post-its where you start um thinking of the actions that you could potentially do to uh improve in this dimension, agree on a general objective, why whatis that you want to achieve on this dimension, and then brainstorm, co-create together potential actions.Um after you've done this, let's say first brainstorming and co-creation, we also have a template that can help you organize those actions into work packages.So, this is how we do the process with AG Innovate workshops in general.AG Innovate is not just used for the application of the EIT Higher Education Initiative.
So, um this is what we do with institutions throughout the whole year, not just in the application period, but it can also be helpful for building your application.So, the second template that we use can help you bring all those post-its that you put in the first template, all those ideas and try to structure them into work packages uh that can support you building a project,for example.So, it's not um template made for the application of EIT Higher Education Initiative, but it's something that you can use if it's helpful as well.Um fourth step, which is completing the cycle is of course implementing these activities.That's where um the funding from the EIT Higher Education Initiative can help.So, you would get funding to implement this action plan, this Innovation Vision Action Plan that you've built based on your AG Innovate results.Um what you will see on the circle that we put is that AG Innovate is a cycle.
So, it's not an endpoint implementing those results or using the funding of the EIT to implement those activities, but we suggest a continuing exercise where you go back to redoing your self-assessment, seeing uh what you improved, seeing whereyou are, and continuing uh learning exercise within the institution um over time.So, that's why we have it as a cycle.And uh well as highlight here as you see AG Innovate is a key part of the EIT Higher Education Initiative uh funding.It is used to make sure that the projects you're proposing are not only interesting projects, but they are projects that are actually meeting the needs of the partners within your consortium.So, AG Innovate helps you ground those ideas into the needs of your community and make sure that you are responding to needs that you identified through the self-assessment.And beyond the EIT Higher Education Initiative, AG Innovate is also recommended for all the Erasmus+ programs.
Specifically, it's recommended for European Universities Alliance projects and Alliances for Innovation projects.So, the tool and the framework is embedded beyond the funding of the EIT, but also um as a tool to support projects within the Erasmus+ framework as well.So, some of you here might be just looking to apply for this next call of the EIT, but some of you might be involved in Alliances for Innovation, European Universities Alliances, and AG Innovate is explicitly recommended to supportthese projects throughout the lifetime of those initiatives.
Participants ask about what it means for AG Innovate to be recommended in Erasmus+ projects and how the tool is used in practice. The answers clarify that it is encouraged, not mandatory, outside the EIT call.
So, this was quick introduction on what is AG Innovate and how it is implemented from our let's say from this cycle perspective.Um I want to give some time to answer questions that are about the framework, about the tool, about the resources before we go in to the practical presentation of Bernhard.So, Bernhard will show how he used it in his project, the practical experience from a coordinator in um implementing AG Innovate, but uh perhaps there are already a few questions about what I introduced so far, what is thetool, what are the resources available.So feel free to raise your hand or type them in the chat.I see already one uh hand raised, so I will um unmute your microphone and you can unmute yourself and ask your question.
Hello Flavia, thank you very much for the presentation.Actually, what I want to ask is your final sentence, uh what do you mean that it is recommended for the uh Erasmus+ projects?What does that recommendation word mean?Like a first step to go for uh Erasmus project?
Yeah, so uh this is taken from the Erasmus+ program guide.So the current program guide that is published in the commission website.So if you look here at the last sentence here um from showing in the slide that is taken from the guide, it says Erasmus+ funded projects such as the European Universities Alliances and the Alliances for Innovation are encouragedto use AG Innovate where relevant to accompany their projects.So what this means is that it is not a requirement for the application of other projects.It is just a requirement um for the IT Higher Education Initiative, but it's recognized as a part of the Erasmus+ tools as a tool that can be useful for different Erasmus+ projects throughout uh their cycle.So um that's what I mean by it uh taking from the program um guide.We do a lot of workshops on AG Innovate with the European Universities Alliances.
Um so we have um done quite a few uh where alliances need support, for example, in understanding what each partner is doing in terms of entrepreneurship and innovation, and AG Innovate uh can help them map out what theyare doing and then plan um their activities um or where they to measure the progress over time and they want to do the self-assessment every couple of years or every year to see how they evolve.So it's a general recommendation from the program guide, but it just shows that the tool, while it's only a mandatory requirement for the ATHENA, it's also useful for other projects.Is that sufficient?Does it answer your question?
Thank you very much.Very helpful.
The discussion covers how to handle prior assessments, how consortium partners should create groups, and how to collect results from different institutions. It also clarifies the six-month validity rule and the minimum-participants question.
Perfect.Are there any are there questions?So I see one question here in the chat.Let me see.In a large university there are multiple faculties and departments.If our team does this assessment now and many other groups do it for other purposes, how should I get those results related to all the partner universities?
Yeah, so the assessment might already have been used.This is a good point.Indeed, you can say with quite some certainty nowadays that somebody, especially if you're from an European university, it's quite likely that someone in your university has already used a gene of it.There is no way for you to access other results of other people within your institution if they did this in a separate group in a separate time and they did not include you as as a member.So what this means is that by logging in with your institutional email, you're not going to be able to see everything that was done on a gene of it before.If you want to try to find out about potential self-assessments that have been done in the past, you would have to ask people directly.However, it's not a problem that different groups within the university use a gene of it at different points in time.
Because a gene of it is this self-assessment perception-based exercise, it could be that one of your departments have done just at the department level to for a specific initiative.It could be that other people were applying for another project in the past and they have used it.So it is a bit let's say it would be hard to track down all everybody who has used a green of eight in your university over time and get those results for you.We cannot provide those results you would have to get it from from the people directly, but it's not a problem to say my colleague used this last year, can I use it again?So you can start a new group and use the self assessment.There is an important practical recommendation here which is when you open the platform you're going to be able to create a group for your institution.
We recommend that each of your partners and I know Bernhard will talk about this so I don't want to go too deeply into it, but we recommend that each of your partners so if you have a consortium ofeight or nine partners as you said here each of these eight or nine partners would create a group for their own institution.So you would have one person one contact point in each partner that is going into the age innovate platform creating a group EAT AGI University of Lisbon 2026 and each partner is creating this group for their project.When they create a group they will get a link that they can share with anyone for that group.They can share a link or they can invite people by email.So what each contact point in the partner would do is that they would be responsible for sharing this link for inviting people to do the self assessment within their institution.
Once they invite people to their institution they click on the link they go do the self assessment.They can also fill in which faculty they are from.So this might be relevant in large universities like you said where you would be able to you can always export your results in an Excel.Let's say you got 20 results from your university.If people filled in their faculty, you can just ask them.It's not a mandatory thing, but you can just ask them to do it.You're also going to be able to maybe even analyze those results by faculty and you might be able to see which faculties have some strengths and weaknesses.So you cannot see the names of the people, but you can see the faculty and the role that they're from.I hope this answers your question, Christian, here from the chat.If not, just type or raise your hand and we can continue discussing it.
So I see another question.Can a research institute participate in multiple projects or grants?So I would ask our colleagues from EIT if they can respond to this question because we are not from EIT.
Thank you Rosanna.
follow-up one as well.No worries.
Okay.Then I also see to apply for the call the self-assessment cannot be older than six months.I don't know if that's also responded by you.
Yes.And the answer is yeah the results can't be any longer than any older than six months.So they need to be recently recently received or conducted.
Perfect.And then here there's another I think proposal that was already yeah responded.So there's only one that I see not responded from Alberto.Is there a minimum amount of participants for the self-assessment?So I just want to respond to this from a general perspective and then Rosanna you can also talk about it from the call perspective, but overall within EIT we never set a specific number because it can be youhave bigger institutions, smaller institutions and eight people in a big institution will mean something different than eight people in a very small institution.So when we're recommending the usage of EIT overall, not just thinking about the application, we always recommend that you reflect and we have a stakeholder guide in our website that can help you reflect on who to involve dependingon the goals that you have, who should you invite to the self-assessment.
So if you're doing a strategic revision of your strategy, perhaps you invite different people.So Rosanna, do you want to complement from the IT AGI application point?Are there is there a minimum number of people?
Um the the direct answer is no and the same that you gave Javier.Um all I would say is uh the remember that the overarching um aim of the of the higher education initiative and the the projects that we that we fund is really all about institutional transformation um and obviously thisis an this should be an institution-wide needs assessment because then what you need to develop um as your proposal for the call is um what's called an innovation vision action plan for the institutions involved for at the institutionallevel for all of the institutions that are participating in the consortium and in the project.So I mean on that basis I would say obviously involve as many people as you can when you're talking about doing an institution-wide needs assessment and your your designing a project for um for the transformation of of the
institution as a whole.So that's a kind of maybe common sense response to that question but on a technical level no there's no minimum requirement from from the call side either.
Yeah.And um a good point Rosanna to involve as many people as you can with this link that you get in your group, it becomes really easy to share with anyone.Uh so what we've had institutions doing for example is even generating a QR code from the moment that you have the link you can even generate a QR code and use it in posters across the campus or ina slideshow that you're doing in an in a presentation, sharing that via email.So you can really just generate this link, spread it across your your institution to collect as many responses as possible.So I see another comment here about the translation of the self-assessment.Um I think there is a very technical point here to be answered by Rosana about the EIT application itself because I know you need to attach the results.But one thing to say is that the self-assessment AGINNOVATE is available in all 24 EU languages.
So I'm not sure which country you're coming from, but just know that it is already translated.And we also have a few extra languages like Indonesia.We have Ukrainian as well.It was released recently in Ukrainian.So those languages.Now Rosana assuming yeah they are not from EU language country.Could they do this instead of attaching the direct export from the platform?
Um I the answer to this is what we require as part of the application form is the PDF of the results and the detailed results.So it needs to be that needs to be in the English language because then that is checked and reviewed as part of the the eligibility check.So in terms of whether on the technical side the the AGINNOVATE tool can somehow connect those two dots.I'm not sure that would you would know that better Flavia, but we do require the the AGINNOVATE results to be uploaded as a PDF in English language for the call.
Yeah.So I hope that answers to your question.So for the call you would need the direct export from the website then not the Google Forms that you copy it in that case.
Bernhard shares how his consortium used AG Innovate in a successful application, including timing, aligning results with call priorities, and building work packages. He emphasizes starting early, focusing on weak spots, and using the tool as a real planning aid rather than a checkbox.
There's another call from another question from Rosie about the call.Rosana maybe you can also answer that in the chat if possible and we can start.I think it will be also very helpful if we move to Bernhard's presentation which will bring a practical side to the tool, and then we can continue any questions on what I just presented or what Rosanna just saidin the chat meanwhile and go back to it in in a Q&A afterwards as well.So right now I'm very happy to introduce Bernhard Weber.Bernhard is one of the 28 experts in the EIT Innovate tool, and he's also the coordinator of the EIT EIT project within the University of Graz.So this was a project funded by EIT Higher Education Initiative in the last round.So in the last year of 2025 Bernhard's project was funded, but beyond that Bernhard is a managing director of the Center for Knowledge and Innovation Transfer in Graz.
He's head of Digital Innovation Modeling at Uni for Life since 2019, and he has over 20 years of experience supporting startups, supporting innovation with over 400 startups directly supported by him.He was also former managing director of the Science Park in Graz.And we are very happy to have him sharing his experience here.So Bernhard, please the floor is yours.Just tell me when to move your slides and yeah, thank you for joining us.
Yeah, thank you for the nice introduction.Thank you for having me in this impressive big group of interested people and organizations for this EIT EIT call.And I try to give our perspective we put on this topic when we prepared our proposal back in 2025 for the 2025 call in this topic two where we were successful with our our our project.So please move on to the next slide.Yeah, basically some overview.As I said, we participate in the call in 25 in topic two as an European university based consortium.So universities those universities are part of the Arcus consortium, which is one of the European universities consortium.We reflecting on six university used the tools during the preparation and we took this in very tough time frame, but we are at the end successful with our proposal which has in core the idea of building an shared
artificial intelligence sandbox for entrepreneur education across the alliance with eight partners in in some plus three associated partners with the associated partners basically more or less the whole Arcus European university consortium is is somehow part of the ofthe project.Last call was about two million as budget.We we started in on the September first our 24 months project period and I tried to tell a little bit what worked for us and how we tried to get use use this HEInnovate framework.Next slide.
Put it on three main points.
Our experience was I would say run it as early as possible so because it's somehow and then not so easy to get every group on the university campus into the HEInnovate tool.So that what we learned.Second with the with the outcomes of the evaluation.So we at least we put it in that sense that we put had a look on the on the weak spots so where we can have the best impact with with a founded project.And it also I think it also helped us that evaluators can trace like the the targets back to the H Innovate statement so it makes it a little bit clearer why we chose why we chosen this and thatKPIs and goals in our activities in our proposal.Next slide.Just to jump in how we we used all the activities so we tried to find out how we put this all all together the context the strategic alignment and the implementation into the also given framework of the of
the EIT EGI KPIs.So we we tried to to match everything which was then a big sheet where we tried to get out the answers how to to form work packages which domains we are forcing in in the in the in thecall.So on the one side we put the context of the H Innovate dimensions and aspects and the baseline gaps.We also put this in context to the regional ecosystem so every partner give has given input about their regional ecosystem and their mapping gaps in the in the S3 mapping.And this we tried to find out how this matched with the with the kicks EIT Kicks strategic objective because the call was strongly leading us to to connect with the EIT Kicks and also in the next 24 monthswe we try to integrate us in in this activities they offer us uh and also we tried to put in this calculation the the major goals of our European University alliance because we do a 24 month project funded
by but at the end it should somehow have an a long-term impact on our European University alliance so that we can sustain the activities and project also after the funding period.Um so that was kind of a successfully help luckily a colleague of me really dig deep in this topic so we did a good analyze so that helped us then to to finally write proposal and form formulate workpackage texts and and all those those stuff so next slide.So I tried to to find out of what does how H innovate influences us positive for the proposal at least from our perspective I think it's it's the calls official reference tool so I think it's good to toto to build on this um topic because it needs less explaining because it's it's this this the the baseline for everything it also helped us to find a shared language across all the partners so we have this three
day statements and and you can discuss about the statements and not discuss like in the in the in the fussy room we can tried helped us to to shortlist the actions we tried to to follow in the inthe proposal and the choosing was getting easier.And of course, we'll see.It gives us a baseline for the impact after after the the funded project.So as as we heard earlier on, it's it's an ongoing assessment tool, so you can do it again after in this example after 24 months and see does did our project have any impact or do we have likepivoted a little bit or focus on on certain points.So I think that's that's a good outcome.So next slide.
We as always in kind of proposal work, the the the you start too late and have to to do little time.So I would propose to start as early as possible with this H Innovate topic, for example, six weeks to agree with this setup, define an owner per partner and and to define everything and then the the hard thingis to collect the answers, of course.It takes a little bit time.I think we we did a good job in that because we did everything in in less than four weeks because because we used to work together in the ARCHOS consortium, most of the partners since the first European Universitycalls in 2017 or 2018 I guess.So we know each other, so that's a good good foundation for trustful work together.And the second thing is most of the partners had used the H Innovate tool before, so it wasn't a start from from Greenfield operation for most I think one or two partners used it the first time.
So we had we had the the luxury to to skip a lot of explanation about this this tool.So so it depends how experienced your group is in this tool.You can make it in shorter time period.So but I would take enough time especially to to reach the groups to the collect the answers and all the you have to send reminders you have chase to the the different groups and usually it's hard to tograb something on leadership from the rectorate to fill out the the agent with tool but it I think it's worth it to chase them and because it brings also the topic in their mindset besides the the the resultsthey they are filling in it they have to to go through those dimensions and see okay that's good ideas maybe I took it over in my strategic work on the university but it heavily depends on how trustful you
are to to send so I have a good relationship to the rectorate so so there are good trust to invest few minutes in this in this in this evaluation tool so next slide.
So as Flavia already said we set up like one group assessment by institution so that we have one report per partner and can compare it on the same level.I think to get a real good information out of it you have to invite a real mix of people in the ideal world you will grab like leadership the academics TTOs the like responsible persons for spin-off program acceleratorprograms students of course also you can approach external stakeholder which you work together on ritual regular basis and they all see the university very differently and that makes actual sense because if you only throw the the evaluation toone group like I don't know TTOs you will have only one dimension and that then it makes no sense basically because you want to see okay where can you improve yourself.Also motivates everybody to to use all eight dimensions so that you can get really find out the the blind spots and of course it heavily depends on on the the owner of on the institution because he or she
has to make all the the work to motivate people to to use the tool and and send reminder and all those stuff and then as we had one group assessment institution we had the same base for for thento to have the same format and can work on that that that saves also a lot of a lot of work.So next slide.
So what we also try to get a lot of a lot of information out of the number so we we we try to really go to statement level to understand where are the the weakest and strong and strongestpoints and and also it was very interesting to see okay where are the spreads between the partners so besides writing the proposal it was a good point for starting discussion where we learn from each other and then dosome other things together and you can it's a it's a conversation starter okay why are we so different in this in this dimension let's see what you are doing here and what we are doing.Also comparing roles how does the leadership group sees the own institution how does the students sees the own institution that's very interesting also to to to to to define work package in a in such a proposal which has
a real impact and and it's also makes no sense to to to somehow hide weak spots um because it would be the best to work on the weak spots.So next slide.So in that case it's a more or less logically
red line you follow.So we picked one statement okay for example the validate and assess learning outcomes which with a for example with a lower scoring then we try to to think about why is it like in this case training but nothingcertifies the competences gained so there's a there's a there's a there's too less certification or too less numbers on the outcomes of trainings and then we put it into the domains and action of the of the call andat the end connected with the KPIs so that we really focus on things that helps us to to reach then the KPIs of of the of the goals and try also to to choose where we can choose thethe KPIs the right ones which helps us a lot.So next slide.Uh what maybe you can avoid is first one of course just use the tool to to make a checkbox on the on the proposal and write everything down and then oh we have to do this and just make
it quickly then it's just working brings no input to the to the project.Of course we had we started with a core for for our project the AI sandbox which we had in back in mind since one or two years and and now we found this this this innovate all that wouldbe good to to try to get the funding for this in that call, but we started with the with the because you have to do a lot of teaching and learning stuff in this in this call.So it helped us to to find the right way.Of course, technically it can be filled out only by one person, but also it makes no sense just try to to catch more than one.Yeah.You have not to try to fix every gap if maybe you find out in the eight dimension a lot of things you can work on.
You have to choose because the time is 24 months is not that long and two million sounds more than it is at the end if you do a lot of things.And of course, not reading it as a as a one off.So try to get use this chance to implement in the organization as a as a as a as a standard tool maybe if they could use it in this in this proposal preparation phase it would be good toto use the chance to implement it kind of do it once a year or something like that or once every regular period or something like that.So if you have motivated found motivated people to use this this tool.Yeah, next slide.
So also that's kind of a check list we we can use.So
just as as a sum summary of that what I just said that you have like really go into the statements, just understand how the results are try to use it as a as a tool to find out howyou can how you can reach the the right KPIs and fulfill the right KPIs.And um also try to rerun it as an as a as an impact measurement tools on on a regular basis that would be think a good a good good way because if you implement it, if you use it,it's it would be not worth just to do it as a one one time action.Yeah, that was a quick run through our our proposal phase.So actually we were successful and we had our kickoff meeting in Graz.So we are now gaining pace in the project and hopefully closing besides having a wonderful AI sandbox for our students want to get want to be entrepreneurs also closing some gaps for the entrepreneurial universities in our Arqus consortium.
So that's at least what I want to try to to aiming for.Thank you.
Questions focus on whether faculties should assess separately or together, and Bernhard explains why his team used one broad institutional group per university. Flavia adds guidance on inviting participants, logging in properly, and exporting results for the proposal.
Thank you Bernhard for this great presentation.I think you managed to take a few points that are very important for in universities applying to this to this funding like this idea don't do the self-assessment in the last minute just as a checkbox but if youwant to build a coherent proposal do it from the start and and build on it and that will make it stronger.So we have time now for some questions for Bernhard.So if anyone has questions you can type them in the chat or you can raise your hand and we will unmute you so you can ask your question.I do see one question in the chat but I think it would be good to clarify this a bit more.So you say many institutions probably share similar projects that need to be included.So what does it mean can we find a pre-designed project?
Can you maybe clarify this Sacha?
Hello again.I'm asking if there is maybe another platform in which we can join representing the institution we are working in to find similar consortiums like this and through which we can also find solutions to our problems.
Okay.
Sacha, maybe I'll I'll jump in here.If that's all right.And if I've understood the question well, this is around consortium building and maybe sharing common challenges and obviously coming together to to write a proposal as a consortium and maybe a consortium that where you do find those thosecommon challenges.So yes, there is a platform.I've shared it in the chat already, but I think there's a lot there's a lot of activity in there, so maybe it's got lost.We have a matchmaking platform dedicated to this call.So you just I I'll share it again in a second.You basically create create a profile for your organization in there you can list what you're looking for in terms of consortium partners, what you can what you can bring to the consortium as well, specific topics that you areinterested in, whether that's kind of more of a regional focus or maybe it's one particular relevant stem area.
And you will basically then have a profile on this portal on this platform and then you can set up meetings within the same platform with people that look interesting to you.They might they might reach out to you to set up a meeting as well.So yes, this is available and it's live.It's live throughout the call the call window.And there are already many many people and organizations represented on there and lots of meetings currently going on.So now is the time definitely to sign up and to start having those meetings given the stage of the the call window we're currently at.Um so I will share the link again.Um but yeah that that's what that platform is is for if I've understood the the question correctly.
Yes, thank you very much.
Perfect.Thank you Rosana for for jumping in and I see a question that perhaps Bernhard can talk about how you did it.So it's a question about should each participating faculty or department within the university complete the self-assessment separately or do we collect input from all relevant academic and administrative units and submit one consolidated on behalf of each university.So you mentioned how each partner did a group but maybe you can also talk about the the departments or faculties.
I mean basically we we we formed one group and tried to to to to have a very broad picture of the whole university.So so we didn't separate like faculties or departments.So that that's a tough thing.So if we go just in in one department bring not that good pictures of the of the entrepreneur university.I mean it depends what you are aiming for for this with the tool you can do it like an evaluation just for one department.In our case we want to see how is the university the universities the six universities how are they how is the baseline where are the the the open question in the entrepreneurial teaching are there some gaps we weshould specifically targeting on.If you make it like in the one group for the whole university you have to make sure that every part of the university is somehow represented in in the in the evaluation otherwise make and that's the the different
thing the the difficult part.So you have to find at least I would say from each faculty one or two persons of for each group like TTO, academic rectorate one or two persons so to have at least one statistically good overview over theover the situation in the university.Yeah, in our case it was I would say it was a little bit easier as as I said most of the university did not the first time and we had a good way to work together but basically thehardest part of it is not the the the the to discuss the findings but to find the people who used the tool.But I think there are the good thing is there a lot is there's a lot of information material so we tried to make some a short presentation to a three or four slides I don't remember exactly where we
can make it like a pitch of the HE Innovate tool to like if I had a short meeting I don't know with the vice rector for research I showed him this three slide deck can you please make thisis just doesn't hurt it helps us to to get some real valuable information for the for our proposal but also for the university so so that's what we did to make a short like tool which every coordinator onevery university gets enhanced to explain it in a very quick way so so that it's that you have like it's like pitching the HE Innovate kind of that because if you there's a lot of information because a lotof dimension a lot of a lot of things which you can do with the HE Innovate so we we we to still it down and try to get this lot of interest that inputs and it was also useful
for me and for the other colleagues in the university because it's it's a good conversation about the the topics and then you have some figures say hey director we have to work on I don't know entrepreneurship teaching andthat in that case because we are below the the average line in our group and rectors always want to be on the other side of of the of the numbers so it's a good starter for conversation.
Yeah, thank you Bernhard for for this insight.I want to maybe also add a few points to this which is this is really important that each coordinator instructs the people that they invite a bit about the tool.So we have a few resources on our website that you can use but basically if you just share a link perhaps people will get a bit confused.If you take the time to do these three or four slides as Bernhard said and say why we're doing this, why it's important and how they do it because also you here all know that is a perception basedtool.People respond based on what they know but the people you're inviting don't necessarily know this so they will come back to you and say I don't have information about this.So it's very useful to take the time to do this quick introduction to the people you're inviting and say you're responding based on your perception.
You're not responding on behalf of the university.We want to hear from you and give a bit of this context.A few other things that I would say that can help respond to this question about the departments.We would also recommend from the agent of A team that you just create one group per institution but then what we would recommend is that when people accept the invitation to this group they will have the opportunity todo the self-assessment as a guest or to log in when they do the self-assessment.It's really important to ask them to log in and not do it as a guest because if they do it as a guest their results will be deleted within 90 days.You will not be able to follow up after, for example, if you win the project, you will not be able to follow up.
And you will not get details about their role.So what I would say, create one group per university, instruct the people to sign up, log in, not do it as a guest because you want to keep these results to go back to them at the end ofthe project and everything.And then when they log in, you can ask them to say which department they are from if that's an information you want to get.So when you they they can type in, there's a a box for the department and later on you can export your group results as a PDF, which is what you attach to your proposal, but you can also exportthem as an Excel, which will give you easier ways to do calculations and to see patterns and and things like that in the university.
The speakers explain how SMEs and other non-HEI stakeholders can be involved in AG Innovate, even though they are not required for the EIT call. They describe how to tailor the dimensions shown to external respondents and why their perspective can be valuable.
I also have a question on whether the self-assessment can be done by SMEs and enterprises.Just a quick answer is that yes.You can involve your non- higher education institution partners.And Bernhard, I don't know if you want to say something about this because you also mentioned in your slide about involving people outside of the university.
Yeah, I think it will be it's as we try to collaborate also with with with the with the ecosystem around the university, it's it's good to to see how how the SME enterprises but see the the entrepreneurship landscapeon the university.And in that case, it's more important as Flavia said to they have some kind of explanation or intro into the into the into the tool because within the campus people are more used to to can't use this university-basedevaluation tool, I would it.Uh, if I go to to, I don't know, to startup guy from the um City Council of Graz, for example, I I would do it explain it we're personal or if we're sending it to a to a collaborateto a SME or enterprise we collaborate, I would definitely try to have send like two or three slides and make a call to explain it.
So but it if it works, you will get I would my experience is they would get a real good feedback because um it's it's an it's a it's a it's a new viewpoint on the university on activities.But you have to explain it more.That's my experience.
Yes, Rosana, do you want to complement on this on what Bernhard said?
Uh, no, not directly.Thanks, Bernhard.I just wanted to um emphasize in the context of the call and the call requirements the EATHEI call um the only higher education institution partners, EATHEI partners are required to um undertake the HE Innovate self-assessment and upload theresults.So there's no requirement on the non-HEI partners.So whatever organization type type you are, whether you're from industry, research institute, um any of the other possible participating organizations that aren't higher education institutions, you do not need to nor are you required to upload results from theHE Innovate self-assessment.Whether you include I mean that doesn't um take away from what Bernhard was just explaining um but it shouldn't be done as a separate exercise for the non-HEI beneficiaries.I just wanted to clarify that.
Yeah.Thank you, Rosana.And um I want to add one point to to that, that we have worked with universities that wanted to get the opinion of the stakeholders uh outside of the university.So one of the things that you can also do, and this is as Rosanna said, you don't have to do this for the EIT application, but considering a GE Innovate as a larger framework that can support you beyondjust an application, um what you can do is that you can create a group for those uh external stakeholders.And when you create a group, every time you create a group on the platform, it will show you the eight dimensions of GE Innovate, and you will be able to choose whether you want to keep all of thoseeight dimensions.So if you're consulting an SME in your region about how your university is doing, maybe you don't want to include a dimension on teaching and learning.
Perhaps they don't have contact with the teaching and learning, or perhaps they have, but um maybe not all dimensions will be applicable.So you can select only the dimensions that are applicable as well if you want to invite another stakeholder.So an approach, Alexandra, if you want to do this would be that you create a group and you can select perhaps you want to select only the dimension of engagement with the ecosystem, which is more focused on howthe university is engaging directly with the government and the companies, how open the university is.And perhaps that's something that this partner would be able to respond.So you can also create a group where they will not see all of the 38 questions, but they will only see the questions of the dimensions you choose.Just if you don't want to confuse them by seeing a question that they might not know how to reply.
So highlighting again what Rosanna said, you don't need to ask non higher education institution partners to do the self-assessment, but then from what Bernhard and I have experienced, you can engage them.It can be very fruitful.It can bring you great results.Um so that's a few ways to do it.
The session addresses how to motivate people to complete the survey and clarifies that filling it in does not make someone a project partner. Rosana explains what membership means in the broader EIT HEI community if a project is funded.
Um are there any further questions?I don't see immediately in the chat.But if there are any other questions for Bernhard or for Rosana or for me in general, feel free to raise your hand.Yes, Saka, please.
Thank you very much again.So let's say that there is the stakeholder who is answering this self assessment.What should they expect?I mean, how can we motivate more people to be engaged in this project?And does that make them a member?Actually, I couldn't get this right.Thank you.
Yeah.So if you're just inviting people to respond to the self assessment within your university.So there are two different things.One thing is the people that will coordinate this process, coordinate the self assessment, coordinate the assignment, and they will have to be deeply engaged.But if you just want to invite people, staff, researchers to do the survey, to do the self assessment, one thing to say also is that it's much quicker than people tend to think.So there's a lot of work that will be put into coordinating this process, into analyzing the results, writing the proposal, preparing your project.But there's not a lot of work in just filling in the survey.So if you want to invite a lot of people in your institution to fill in the survey, we have timed it already.Well, we have one university that used the survey and they timed it and it took people less than 15 minutes to do the whole self assessment.
So you can also just use this argument that it really doesn't take that much time.Now, whether there's I think a question also related here to whether you become a partner or not or the consortium or the application.So maybe we can also clarify that.But inviting somebody to do a self assessment doesn't mean that they become a partners partners within a consortium or within a project.But yeah, I don't know if Rosana, Rosanna, want to say something on that those notes or?
No, I mean the in terms of I I don't know necessarily what the membership means in the context of HE Innovate but for the for the context of the initiative, the higher education initiative, you participate if you're selectedfor funding and you participate in in one of those selected projects, you're then a member of the EIT HEI community.That doesn't end at the end of the funding period.We actually have a thriving community made up of all of our previous current and potentially and future organizations and people involved in the projects and there are lots of things we do at the community level.So in that sense you're kind of a member of the community but I don't know whether that was necessarily the the question here.But that that's from the side of the of the initiative.
Flavia presents additional AG Innovate resources, training opportunities, user stories, and ways to stay connected. Rosana highlights the next info session and explains how evaluators will look for a clear link between the self-assessment and the project plan.
Perfect.Thank you Rosanna for clarifying.Thank you Saca.Okay, are there any further questions?I think we have covered everything in the chat.I would just like to present we have just 10 more minutes.I just want to present a few resources and opportunities that you can continue to engage with HE Innovate that will help you throughout your journey of becoming more innovative and more entrepreneurial and promoting innovation and entrepreneurship within yourinstitution.If you scan this QR code you'll go to the events of the HE Innovate website page, not to be confused with the EIT HEI series of information sessions but just any event that we do for HE Innovate.We do twice a year fully funded Train the Trainers program which is an in-depth two days training about how to use HE Innovate to make your institution more innovative and entrepreneurial.Um, we just had uh one in October and we will announce the next one soon, but you can um see that on the website.
Uh, we're also always looking to see experiences of people who have used AG Innovate.So if you use it to build your application this year and you think you have something interesting, it was an interesting process, you learned something out of it, you got benefits out of it, um contact us.We publish on our website user stories coming from different universities that use the tool to help people see um how uh the tool can be helpful.Uh, you can also read those stories already on our website, uh the stories that we have.And uh overall, we do these information sessions not just for EIT AGI, but throughout the year.So you can stay tuned for the next ones.And uh we also facilitate direct workshops with institutions um as a part of the AG Innovate project.So these are free of charge, of course.If you have a specific need in your institution that you want to use the tool, also contact us.
Um, and just one last slide to subscribe to our our newsletter so you um receive invitations to all these events.And uh we have a hashtag be an AG innovator.If you join any event, if you use the tool, um if you use this hashtag, we'll see your posts.So sometimes these things get lost so many posts in social media.So these are just a few ways to stay connected.Um, Rosana, I'm not sure uh are you have a hand raise, so you want to say something?
Can you finish Okay.So I just wanted to share um those those things.Um, you can contact us at [email protected] at any point.And um I hope that this session will make your application process and your journey easier and it will be useful, not just a checkbox as Bernhard said, but a truly learning process and support uh supporting framework.So Rosana.
Thank you Fabia.I just wanted to finish by also from our side from the call side encouraging you to join the upcoming info sessions particularly the next one that's happening on the 11th so early next week on the mail framework andthe impact domains and funded actions because I think it really links closely with well it's really around how we translate the the results of the HE innovate self assessment into the the IVAP itself which is the proposal itselfso the application to the call and I would really encourage everyone to come to this next session and because these two these two areas are very much connected and it might help with some of the questions that werecoming into the chat on you know how do I then use the results and kind of demonstrate how I've used the results in the the writing of the proposal.
So I'd really encourage you to join that next session as well and also just point out that in the award criteria that's in the call text you can also see that that this is an aspect that will beevaluated as well how the HE innovate results self-assessment results have actually been used how they've informed the selection of the activities the general scope of the project in the in the IVAP.So take a look as well if you haven't at the awards criteria and take a look at the sub criteria and there's there's I know there's one in the excellent section there's also in the later sections as wellreferences to how you kind of create the coherent connect the dots between the HE innovate needs assessment and then the kind of final plan that you that you design for the for the project.So take a look at the award award criteria as well for for detail on how the evaluators will be looking at that as well.
So I just wanted to to to say that um a a tip really for potential applicants.
Thank you, Rosana.This is a great tip and I think Bernhard's slide where he connected um the assessment, the goals, uh I think that slide was a really really interesting use of that.So you're showing how you used AG Innovate to fulfill this award criteria.Um so thank you for pointing that out.
The hosts thank the speakers and participants, offer final encouragement for the application process, and close the session. The transcript ends with farewells.
Um I want to thank everyone then who joined us today.Um I want to thank Bernhard especially for being open to share your experience, your knowledge, your expertise.Um I'm sure it was very useful to see this practical aspect.Uh also thank you to Loredana and David from the Commission and the OECD for supporting AG Innovate throughout the years and being here today and for all the IT AGI team uh that joined us and also helped inresponding to these questions.So um that would be all from my side today.I wish you all a great weekend ahead um and let's stay connected.Good luck in building your applications.Good luck in building your project proposals and um we stay connected after this.Thank you everyone.
Bye bye.Thank you.
Thank you everyone.Thank you Flavia.
Bye.Thank you.
Thank you.Bye.
Yeah.