The WPBS brand new EU project has been prepared and approved within the EU Leonardo da Vinci Programme, Transfer of Innovation and the International Cooperation Office on behalf of the WPBS will be coordinating the project realization activities from 03/11/2008 to
The WPBS is the project leader and coordinator, in collaboration with partners from Italy, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Cyprus.
The full title of project FASTER is Training for Fast – Growing Entrepreneurs (FASTER) and it fully explains the main goal of the project. Vocational training centers, and Innovation Intermediaries in general have to further develop their training offer and target high – growth oriented entrepreneurs, rather than just self – employed people. High – growth oriented entrepreneurs are those who expect to employ 20 people or more within the next 5 years, mostly in emerging branches of the economy. That is not an arbitrary number but it represents a size when business developed some level of internal specialization, and identifiable management function as well as some kind of separation of the ownership and employees.
What is so unique about the FASTER project? The main difference between widely available programmes for self – employed people, and programmes for would – be – entrepreneurs, is that the second embed additional management training modules (such as general management, HR management, finance, soft skills) and support students in the start – up – phase, connecting them with incubation and early stage finance services.
Furthermore, the available vocational training offers focus mainly on:
- self – employed target group who need to acquire the basics
- of business planning, accounting, and administration procedures so
- the groundings needed to start an individual or micro company with 1 – 5 employees,
- professional managers who need to learn general management techniques (financial, accounting, HR management, logistics, sales and marketing etc.).
That is why, the main aim of the project FASTER is to transfer tailored training programme for supporting high – growth oriented entrepreneurs. The programmes will be transferred to four New Member States, namely Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Cyprus.
The programme, designed to teach entrepreneurship to those committed to exploiting their knowledge through the formation of a knowledge intensive company, has been successfully launched in Italy three years ago. Both the programme and its organizational structure will be used as a base to tailor training initiatives in each Transferee Country where the lack of programmes customized on the mentioned target needs, as well as the lack of co – ordination among the Innovation Intermediaries (VET organizations, TTOs, BICs, Early Stage Investors) which should support knowledge intensive firms formation, is observed.
The project FASTER aims at improving the quality and innovativeness of vocational education, through introducing a training programme designed for a particular target group not properly addressed by the vocational education offer in the Transferee Countries, namely ambitious entrepreneurs.