ESIL

1.Information

Leonardo da Vinci II project “ESIL – European Sustainable Innovation License (for SME´s)”, Agreement LLP/LdV/TOI/2008/AT/23, project no. 2008-1-AT1-LEO05-00615

Director: Prof.dr.eng. Radu VASIU
Value: 11.157 EURO

Period: 2008-2010

Members:
Assoc.lect.eng. Diana ANDONE
Andrei TERNAUCIUC, PhD student
Bogdan DRAGULESCU, PhD student
Tatiana TERNAUCIUC

Partners:
Cleaner Production Centre Graz, Austria
Stenum GmbH, Austria
Bit Media E-Learning Solution, Austria
University of Maribor, Slovenia
Enviros, Czech Republic
AREA Science Park, Italy
Insin, Germany
LTC, Sweden
Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland
Hess Innovation, Switzerland

Project web page: http://esil.cpc.at

ESIL (The European Sustainable Innovation Licence) aims at consolidating successful training programmes for SMEs in the fields of innovation and sustainability from several EU member states (Austria, Italy, Germany, Slovenia, Estonia) as well as disseminating the method by means of a defined procedure to other member states such as Ireland, Czech Republic and Romania.
At the moment there are several, mostly regional initiatives aimed at strengthening innovation within SMEs. These differ in scope, contents, quality and application point within the innovation process. They are also disconnected, do not have the same focus, but most importantly their language and heterogeneous nature make it more and more difficult for companies to choose a suitable programme for the education of employees in the field of innovation management and sustainability.

The goals of ESIL are:

• A homogeneous understanding and model for the training, including corresponding training materials
• The development of quality standards for the training of innovation management which also includes a final examination and the certificate or “Innovation Licence”
• The establishment of a European network and periodic conferences
• The creation of an e-learning platform
• Uniform understanding and model of an innovation training (innovation & sustainabily)
• Creating a Standard of Quality for Training of Innovationmanagement, incl. an examination and a certificate „Innovation Licence“ (especially for SME´s)
• Setting up a European Network & regular conferences for SME‘s

The target groups of the ESIL project are:

• First of all the national trainer, who will implement the workshops and accompany the participants during the implementation of the contents
• Secondly the employees in companies who will learn to identify problems within the company, describe the challenge in a function-oriented way and subsequently develop tailored solutions within “on the job” training.
• This means that the target groups will be familiarised with state-of-the-art innovation methods and will be enabled to chose, for themselves, the most effective solutions to their problems. In order to achieve this, the target groups have to know the correlation of the methods and the optimum application of the methods within the process of innovation management.

The results of the ESIL project:

• An integrated training course managing the process of developing sustainable innovation and problem solving competence (with due consideration to the requirements of time, availability, and cost)
• The ESIL training concept with basic and advanced training modules consisting of a 2 day basic training course (comprising an overview of the topic “method supported innovation management and sustainability”)
• 4 – 8 advanced training modules (each taking 2 days) to deepen topics such as innovation strategy and sustainability, innovation and creativity, problem analysis and idea generation, evaluation and protection of ideas, R&D management, funding instruments
• Consolidated training material (slides, media, worksheets, texts,…)
• An adjusted examination and certification concept
• Skilled trainers in 7 countries (Austria, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Sweden, Czech Republic, Romania)
• Implemented training of 15 representatives of SMEs in four countries (Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Austria) with a subsequent implementation project
• documented experiences of the use of Standard Voice over IP software as tool for the coaching during the problem solution process
• A project website
• Publications
• Marketing material
• Co-operation with interest groups (such as Chamber of Commerce) for spreading the idea in seven countries