About project

Project entitled Youth 4 Open Innovation plans to encourage and promote open innovation. We will be working on improving youth’s skills for open innovation by increasing their: introspective, extrospective, interactive and technical skills. We will also encourage collaboration between higher education institutions, youth, youth organizations and private companies (business sector/SMEs).

Our initiatives will be focused on easing innovation process by increasing collaboration between the private sector, academic institutions, youth organization, NGOs. The activities that will be conducted will reinforce the links between science, research, education, and industry in Montenegro, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The youth is the hope of our future. Jose Rizal

The project will enable a better understanding of the interconnection between formal, non-formal education, vocational training, other forms of learning and the labor market.

Project outputs

Project outputs which will continue after project completion are:

• Open innovation curriculum that will become part of standard FUDS curricula offered to new generations of youth students.
• Manual for curriculum implementation which will be shared to other HEIs in Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina that will lead to revision of their curriculum.
• Training programs in open innovation skills that will be available online for further reference and learning of youth - they will become part of regular activities of NGOs involved from Partner Western Balkan Countries as it will also rise partners capacities and make their training program in line with market need, therefore they will continue promoting them after completion of project.
• WP3 will identify the need for collaboration and collaboration platform that will involve stakeholders from quadruple Helix to apply for additional funding for innovation programs funded under Erasmus (youth mobility, youth-pass for trainings, strategic alliances for applied open innovation), COSME or Horizon 2020 programs or by national innovation funding.

Project activities

The main activities are organized as work packages:

• WP1 - Development of curricula program for open innovation. By involving professionals from participating institutions, youth and experts who are engaged in daily interaction with youth students, unemployed, business sector partner will develop innovative curricula that have more relevance with labour market demands and business sector skills and therefore will enable increased success in employment of youth coming out of the faculty.
• WP2–Implementing set of non-formal trainings for students and youth for increasing their entrepreneurship and innovation skills in order to encourage open innovation.
  For their potential to be unleashed, youth should be provided with adequate high-quality training in technical skills, media literacy skills, interactive skills and research skills outside formal education systems. The trainings will help young people to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are frequently said to be needed in the labor market. The non-formal trainings will help youth to develop their creativity and innovation, which involve defining problems, coming up with ways of dealing with them, and sticking to a chosen course of action. In this way training will contribute to closing the gap between the competences acquired by young people and the needs of the labor market.
• WP3. Rising the awareness activities – Under this package we plan for organizing round table discussion with local stakeholders, Business open innovation competition events in each country and Promotion activity events - Website updates, presence in social networks and media, participation in meeting and events for different purposes, communications and connection with stakeholders for multiplication, valorization, mainstreaming and sustainability are activities of this WP. Also, the project was developed with high level of dissemination and exploitation capacity embedded in partner's network and its work-plan.