In a landmark decision, the Governing Board of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT) has announced the continuation of the ‘EIT Higher Education Institutions (HEI) Initiative’.
Due to the remarkable achievement of the programme’s pilot phase, including the training of 40 000 students and staff and providing support to over 1000 start-ups and scale-ups, the EIT HEI Initiative will now be extended until 2027. The EIT HEI Initiative supports systemic transformations within universities to steer their research and innovation strategies beyond the classroom to address some of the biggest global challenges.
Universities and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are invaluable to Europe’s innovation ecosystem. However, difficulties lie in properly connecting universities to regional non-academic partners to foster innovation; and transferring business and entrepreneurship teaching beyond traditional business faculties. As Europe’s largest and most experienced innovation ecosystem, the EIT created a dedicated programme: the EIT HEI Initiative to unlock the full innovation and entrepreneurship potential of higher education institutions (HEIs). During the programme’s pilot phase, 359 HEIs and 179 non-academic were supported with EUR 69 million. Across 65 projects, more than 40 000 students, academic staff, and non-academic staff received training in innovation and entrepreneurship and over 1 000 start-ups and scale-ups received support.
EIT’s Higher Education Programme extended to 2027 after success of pilot phase | EIT (europa.eu)