31.5.2012

CARPE focusses on entrepreneurship and regional innovation

During its meeting on 24–25 May in Brussels, the Steering Committee of CARPE, Consortium on Applied Research and Professional Education, agreed on the following three main issues.

In education, CARPE will collaborate specifically in the field of entrepreneurship, together with the employers in their regions. The five universities want to prepare their students for entrepreneurship through integrating local initiatives in distance and web-based learning. Universitat Politècnica de València will launch a first initiative before July 2012. In the first half of 2013 a conference on entrepreneurship will take place at HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht.

Secondly, in the field of joint research, topics for working groups will be defined under the framework of the six following themes: health, applied arts, sustainability, social innovations, creative engineering and entrepreneurship. The challenges addressed by the European research programme Horizon 2020 are expected to be leading by defining the joint focal points. In 2013 the initiatives will be presented in second biannual CARPE conference which will be held in Manchester.

Furthermore, strengthening the institutional infrastructure of CARPE will be aimed at. Staff members of the partners will be invited to communicate issues that can be addressed in informal working groups, so the universities can learn from each other. Topics that were already mentioned are:  research databases, quality in education and post-graduate education.

The initiatives of CARPE are at the heart of the European policy plan, Europe 2020, which aims at, among others, strengthening the innovation capacity of the European Union through research and education and the involvement of  the industry, with a special emphasis on SME's, in knowledge development.

Six months after the official launch of CARPE in Utrecht, the members of its Steering Committee met on 24–25 May in Brussels. Since the networking conference in November 2011, many initiatives between the academics and also administrators of the universities were started. And as a material proof of the collaboration, Turku University of Applied Sciences facilitated the publication of a book with a number of papers presented at the conference.

More information

Carpe consortium’s website can be found at www.carpenetwork.org.

Applied Research and Professional Education – Proceedings from the first CARPE networking conference in Utrecht on 2–4 November 2011 was edited by Juha Kettunen, Ursula Hyrkkänen & Anttoni Lehto. Download the publication for free