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News announcement13 August 2020

New practical guidelines to support entrepreneurialism in the EU

Practical steps, key actions, tips and online resources to support people to become more entrepreneurial.

EntreComp defines entrepreneurship as the ability to turn ideas into actions that generate value for others.
EntreComp defines entrepreneurship as the ability to turn ideas into actions that generate value for others.
© peshkova, adobe stock 2020

Today, the Commission launches new guidelines to help educators, employers and recruiters ensure Europeans are equipped with the entrepreneurial skills needed to tackle today’s big challenges – from the digital and green transitions to the post-coronavirus world of work.

This guidance includes practical steps, key actions, tips and online resources to support people to become more entrepreneurial.

The EU's entrepreneurship competence framework (EntreComp) defines entrepreneurship as the ability to turn ideas into actions that generate value for others. These skills can help people develop personally, increase their employability, and contribute to growth and innovation. The framework provides a common reference to help educators, recruiters and employers identify and nurture entrepreneurialism to support people to actively participate in society, manage their own lives and careers and start value-creating initiatives.

The EntreComp Playbook is a toolkit for educators that offers principles, methods and tools to use the framework to facilitate entrepreneurial skills development. It sets 9 principles to guide anyone in designing, implementing and monitoring that development:

  • Experience: plan the entrepreneurial learning experience
  • Novelty: focus on new value creation
  • Triggers: embed triggers for emotional learning
  • Reflection: use reflection to make learning visible
  • Ecosystem: connect with the wider community
  • Collaboration: promote collaboration – entrepreneurship is a collective competence
  • Others: engage others and be empathetic to their needs
  • Mentoring: be a mentor for the learner, rather than just an instructor
  • Progression: Assess progress through multiple methods.

Released alongside the Playbook, the EntreComp at Work report includes several case studies from labour market intermediaries who have been using the framework to support people to progress on the ‘employability path' towards sustainable employment and entrepreneurship.

This includes the Youth@Work partnership of national agencies across Europe, who have been using the EntreComp framework to support and develop entrepreneurship and employability across youth-work strategies and initiatives at national and EU levels. Further afield, organisations like Startup Support South Africa are using the framework to help employees at risk of redundancy develop part time enterprises into sustainable, full time income.

Entrepreneurial skills and the European Skills Agenda

Both new publications are a call to action for more organisations to make use of EntreComp as a key component for delivering on the goals of the recently adopted European Skills Agenda for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience. Its 12 flagship actions underline the importance of empowering everyone, whether they are employed or not, to build skills necessary to thrive at work and life.

The Skills Agenda includes a European Action on Entrepreneurship Skills. This action is designed to support entrepreneurial mindsets and will explicitly support the systematic use of the EntreComp Framework.

Related Content

EntreComp at Work: The European Entrepreneurship Competence Framework in action in the labour market

EntreComp Playbook: Entrepreneurial learning beyond the classroom

Details

Publication date
13 August 2020