Sustainability of European educational offers and actions

How to ensure the transition of EU project results into marketable products ensuring transferrable sustainability?

The European Commission spends a lot of money on the development of innovative educational material, methods and courses. Regrettably many of those innovative products never reach their full potential target groups. DEEP.Com is changing this situation!

Europe has expressed its ambition to become the most advanced knowledge based economy in the world. The European Commission invests considerable amounts of money on EU projects under several target and topic oriented programmes and actions, drawing on creative and innovative ideas of European professionals and educationalists.

In terms of numbers, the Commission spent more than 3 billion EUROs for the “Socrates 2000-2006 Programme” to fund different kind of actions: Grundtvig approved and funded 417 projects and 37 Networks (Adult education), Comenius 386 multilateral projects and 41 networks (School education), while in Leonardo da Vinci (Vocational education and training) the biggest efforts, namely 2007 pilot projects of “Development of Innovation”, and other 78 networks and 74 projects on reference material, plus 165 language projects.

Whereas the “Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP) 2007–2013” had an indicative total budget of €6.970 billion over the seven years spent for projects in Comenius, Leonardo da Vinci, Grundtvig, Erasmus, Jean Monnet and the Transversal Programmes.

It is understandable therefore that EU project grants should be justified and proven to be relevant for the European economy – and eventually for businesses and people in Europe. And what better use of EU grant money than actually using the outcomes of EU projects for commercial development and advancements? This is exactly what the DEEP.Com project set out to do.

DEEP.Com aimed to support the commercialisation of adequate EU-project results and products by transitioning those into market products including branding and marketing, while increasing the high-profile and publicity of EU projects and products. It therefore developed online-support for project managers covering all stages of marketing (USP, 4 P's of the Marketing Mix as there are product, price, place, promotion) and designed e-learning material, supporting project managers in transition of their products.

Through the multipurpose EU-Xchange business Platform (www.eu-xchange.com) we were able to support disseminating the availability of European LLP projects and their results to new target groups, proving the relevance and applicability of those project results and providing innovative products and services to the people of Europe and beyond – plus altering the image of the EU from a money spender to a money generator.

 In focus was to investigate and research adequate project and results of main Lifelong Learning projects funded since 2000 by utilising existing database e.g. ADAM, EVE, GINCO network, yearly compendia and other sources to develop suitable methodologies and practical tools to facilitate the exploitation of project results, while also promoting the exploitation of results at European level (by sector, theme, user group…) and a strategy on exploitation of results in the field of lifelong learning, for example development and testing of methodologies, business models and practical tools for sharing, transfer and exploitation of results.

The research aspect of the DEEP.Com project was to determine criteria for “commercial” success of projects by analysing successful projects.

DEEP.Com, through its business platform suggests a comprehensive approach to marketing of projects and their results, where the strategy towards utilisation of results is the wider objective, and marketing itself is a part of this overall strategy, which may be called then a marketing/dissemination strategy.

DEEP.Com - Dissemination and Exploitation of EU-Projects: Transition to Commercialisation

[su_tabs active="1" vertical="yes"]What does it support [su_tab title="Objectives"]

DEEP.Com aims to enhance the number of the LLP projects being successful – in the meaning of commercial success – assisting project managers to make contact with potential users, by utilizing existing bodies e.g. trade unions, teacher and trainer associations, chamber of commerce, industrial bodies, SMEs, ministries and HR organization on one hand and by translating project results into marketable products on the other

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[su_tab title="Activities"]

• Gathering Best Practice examples and guide-lines for project managers
• Development of E-learning tool kit for project managers on licensing & marketing, providing legal and practical information for project managers, co-ordinators and licensers and useful information about marketable project results for potential users / licensees
• Creation of EU-Xchange, an E-market place for project co-ordinators and potential users

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[su_tab title="Results"]

• EU-Xchange a BUSINESS PLATFORM linking EU projects to professional associations and companies around Europe offering appropriate online services and training for EU project coordinators
• E-learning support on Licensing & Marketing for project managers

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[su_tab title="Partners"]

• Beneficiary: ROC Midden Netherlands (Netherlands)
• Coordinator: The Business Club AUSTRIALIA (Austria)
• Sdrudzenie Znam I Moga - Know & Can (Bulgaria)
• iberika (Germany)
• MEH - Mersyside Expanding Horizons Ltd. (United Kingdom)
• Dacorum CVS - Council for Voluntary Services (United Kingdom)
• Pistes Solidaires (France)
• PMA - Agentura pro evropské projekty a management (Czech Republic)
• UBW Unternehmensberatung Wagenhofer (Austria)

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[su_tab title="Info & contacts"]

Follow the project IN ACTION

Date of project: 30/12/2010 – 29/12/2012

DG of reference: DG EAC, Education and Training, Lifelong Learning Programme - Transversal Programme KA4 - Dissemination and Exploitation of results

Contact:

CESIE: luisa.ardizzone@cesie.org

www.deepcom.eu

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