Our projects

Univations is launching echt.MACHEN, a new project for students in Saxony-Anhalt who want to become real doers. For one school year, they receive professional support to develop and implement their very own ideas.

The basis for echt.MACHEN is the Entrepreneurship Competence Framework (EntreComp). A reference framework published by the European Commission in 2016. EntreComp defines 15 key competencies whose teaching promotes entrepreneurial thinking and action in a goal-oriented manner.The goal is life-based learning.With the content of echt.MACHEN tailored to this, students strengthen the competencies that are important for this.  

echt.MACHEN is based on the personal interests of young people and can be integrated into any classroom. Investigating economic facts and contexts and deriving decisions from the results are part of every project.However, interdisciplinary work is also possible, e.g. organizing an exhibition as part of art lessons.A school garden on the occasion of biology?Or the participants make the more sustainable design of the soccer club their sports project. The topics can be as diverse as the curriculum and the lives of the students.   

The pilot phase will run in the 2023/2024 school year. During this time, the echt.MACHEN team enriches the lessons with various workshops and tools and accompanies the students with individual consultation hours on the way to their project.

Univations GmbH supports the Ministry of Science, Energy, Climate Protection and Environment of Saxony-Anhalt in the implementation of the Hugo Junkers Award, the most important innovation award in Saxony-Anhalt. Every year for almost 30 years, pioneering ideas from science, industry and trade have been honored. The awards for pioneering research projects and creative business ideas are presented in four different categories:

• Most innovative basic research projects 
• Most innovative applied research projects 
• Most innovative products, services and business models 
• Special award: Most innovative plans and projects in the field of energy and environmental research 

Among other things, the Univations team is responsible for the preparation and implementation of the jury meetings and the award event in July 2023, as well as strengthening public relations for the Hugo Junkers Prize.    

Univations is a project partner in the Erasmus+ funded project Succession Ready. The project is led by The Vision Works GmbH from Halle (Saale). Succession Ready aims to sustainably influence the high failure rate of succession processes in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe. Currently, succession in family businesses fails in around 30 percent of cases.

The target groups are first and foremost owners of SMEs who are empowered by Succession Ready to prepare themselves and their companies for succession. This includes identifying and promoting potential successors in the workforce as well as recognising and successfully solving the hurdles of the succession process.

The project also addresses potential successors. On the basis of a sound analysis, they receive a comprehensive strengths and weaknesses profile with which they can prepare themselves for the takeover and the tasks ahead.

In addition, the project enables support structures on the topic of succession (e.g. vocational training organisations, chambers, advisors, consultants) to professionally accompany the takeover process. They gain access to comprehensive teaching materials and, through the interactive assessments, a clear added value for their services.

This integrated approach leads to a broad use of the provided resources by all relevant target groups as well as an improved service offer of the VET sector. This increases the likelihood of successful succession processes and contributes sustainably to strengthening the SME sector in general.

The consortium combines the necessary expertise, access to all relevant target groups and comprehensive EU project management competence. Other partners are:

- The Vision Works, Germany

- Meath County Council, Ireland

- University Industry Innovation Network (UIIN), Netherlands

- Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia, Slovenia

- Academy of Entrepreneurship, Greece

Since every takeover, especially for successors, is accompanied by the acquisition of new competences in entrepreneurship and start-up management, Univations will contribute its expertise in these fields across the project. In addition, the Succesion Ready project will benefit from its valuable experience in the management of EU projects. Univations is responsible for the preparation of an international study on challenges, success factors, needs and knowledge gaps of SMEs and successors. It will provide in-depth knowledge and structure for the creation of the resources and learning materials. Subsequently, comprehensive training courses for SMEs and successors will be developed to prepare them optimally for the succession process, including accompanying tools to support the process in its implementation. A package will be developed to enable the VET sector to easily integrate the resources into their service and training portfolio.

The project started in November 2021 and is scheduled to run for three years.

With the project "ULYSSES - Digital Student Competition on Family Business", Univations GmbH is once again a partner in a European consortium partnership funded by the EU. Under the project management of the University of Szeged in Hungary, the project focuses on entrepreneurship and digital education for students.

The aim is to empower students to act and think in an entrepreneurial way and to develop their digital skills, especially in preparation for their professional life after graduation as well as for the challenge of lifelong learning. This will be done on the basis of a digital student competition - the Ulysses competition - involving a three-way cooperation scheme between family business stakeholders, university students and university lecturers.

The total duration of the project is 2 years. Further project partners are:

• University of Szeged, Hungary (project management)

• MCI - Management Center Innsbruck, Austria

• University of Vienna, Austria

• Free University of Bolzano, Italy

• Fundus GmbH, Austria

The Student-run Interdisciplinary Allied Health Digital Practice Centre (SIAHDPC) is a joint Erasmus+ Capacity Building project funded by the European Commission. Running from January 2021 to December 2023, SIAHDPC aims to build a student-run facility in Pristina that promotes interdisciplinary collaboration, innovation and entrepreneurship, and new pedagogical approaches in the field of digital healthcare.                                  

With the aim of enabling cross-border knowledge exchange in the field of digital healthcare, the SIAHDPC project consortium brings together the following EU (university) partners with Kosovar educational institutions:

• Heimerer College (Project Coordinator)
• Universiteti Publik "Kadri Zeka" (Kosovo)
• Rochester Institute of Technology Kosovo (Kosovo)
• JAMK University of Applied Sciences (Finland)
• Metropolia University of Applied Sciences (Finland)
• Medical Faculty of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany)
• Institute of Southeast Europe for Health and Social Policy (ISEE-HSP) (Kosovo)
• Klinika Digjitale (Kosovo)
• Ministry of Education, Science and Technology - MEST of the Republic of Kosovo (Kosovo)
• MilkeyWayCreative (Kosovo)
• Univations GmbH (Germany)

The envisaged knowledge transfer will take place along the elaboration of manifest project results, which will be implemented in the framework of the planned project activities:

1. creation of a toolkit with modern pedagogical approaches based on digital technologies for virtual and mixed reality-based teaching.

2. identify and share best practices in the areas of interdisciplinary collaboration, ICT and digital literacy, and in promoting entrepreneurship. 

3. updating existing in-service training opportunities in the fields of innovation and entrepreneurship, ICT and interdisciplinary cooperation.

4. establishing an EU-Kosovo network for cooperation and mobility of staff and for training in skills to enable lifelong learning

Univations GmbH will contribute to the SIAHDPC project together with the Medical Faculty of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), in particular the Working Group on Health Services Research, by supporting the development of digital and entrepreneurial competencies among the Kosovar partners and enabling them to independently transfer knowledge to their students. The project coordination at SIAHDPC is carried out by Kolegji Heimerer (Kosovo).

The project "Entrepreneurial and Intrapreneurial Competences Assessment Alliance" (EICAA), which started on 01.01.2021, is an Erasmus+ funded knowledge alliance coordinated by Univations with a duration of 3 years and is subject to the supervision of the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency of the European Commission(EACEA). The consortium includes 9 organisations (5 universities, 4 companies) from a total of 5 EU countries.

EICAA aims to develop a digital platform for the assessment and development of entrepreneurial competences. This will enable universities, companies and organisations to carry out profiling and monitoring of entrepreneurial competences (e.g. among students or employees). An essential conceptual basis for this is the Entrepreneurship Competence Framework, which was developed by the Joint Research Center of the European Commission.

By recording entrepreneurial competence profiles on the digital platform, learning activities or training opportunities can be used in a more targeted way to strengthen entrepreneurial thinking and action. Suitable teaching and training materials to promote entrepreneurial competences are also being developed by the EICAA consortium. A selection of these materials will be automatically suggested to the users of the digital platform - depending on the assessment result - to improve entrepreneurial competence areas.

In addition to Univations GmbH, the EICAA consortium consists of the following organisations:

• Adsata (Germany)
• University of Hohenheim (Germany)
• TecnoCampus (Spain)
• Antwerp Management School (Belgium)
• Management Center Innsbruck - MCI® (Austria)
• ProMedia Kommunikation GmbH (Austria)
• Evista Ltd. (Hungary)
• University of Szeged (Hungary)

The project is also supported by a number of associated partners. EICAA is one of 30 projects selected by the European Commission from 217 Europe-wide applications in the course of the Erasmus+ 2020 Knowledge Alliance Call. Univations GmbH is the first company from Saxony-Anhalt to take on the project management for an Erasmus+ Knowledge Alliance.

With the Erasmus+ project "Unite for Horizon Europe" (UNITE4H), seven partner organisations from seven countries have set themselves the goal of improving the establishment of (R&D) cooperation between science and industry (especially SMEs) within the framework of the EU's Horizon Europe funding programme.

Starting with the identification of the challenges and opportunities of such collaborations, as well as a list of basic opportunities for collaboration within Horizon Europe, the development of a Horizon Europe engagement training programme will be used to increase awareness, skills and know-how among scientists and industry representatives for participation in Horizon Europe. Finally, a validation of the training programme through pilot tests and workshop sessions is planned.

The target groups addressed are primarily scientists and representatives of established companies who have not yet been involved in Horizon Europe or Horizon 2020 partnerships. In particular, however, UNITE4H addresses those stakeholders who in principle have the intention to carry out joint R&D projects, but have not yet been able to implement them.

Univations GmbH will contribute its experience in participating in and managing Erasmus+ consortia projects and will be responsible for the quality management of UNITE4H. Furthermore, Univations is an integral part of all other work packages. Consequently, know-how and experience values of the institute in the field of knowledge and technology transfer as well as innovation management will flow into the creation of the UNITE4H training programme. At the same time, Univations will also participate in the piloting of the training program.

The project is under the supervision of the Cyprus Foundation for the Management of European Lifelong Learning Programmes and will run from 1 September 2020 to 31 August 2022.

Project partners are:

• Novatex Solutions, Cyprus (Coordinator)
• University Industry Innovation Network - UIIN, Netherlands
• Meath County Council, Ireland
• Institute Mines Telecom Business School, France
• Universidad Carlos III De Madrid, Spain
• Crazy Town Oy, Finland

The aim of the project "Gründerland Sachsen-Anhalt" is to improve the start-up process in Saxony-Anhalt and to increase incentives for self-employment. The focus is on a new online platform that reports on the promotion of start-ups in Saxony-Anhalt, and interlinks all players in this field. The aim is to develop and implement a communication campaign that takes up the existing initiatives and communicative approaches in the state and combines them in a meaningful way in an overarching, orientation-giving campaign. A cross-media approach is to be used to ensure that the content is distributed to different target groups. Selected communication measures will make the relevant content known in the country and beyond its borders. The long-term goal is, above all, to improve the climate for start-ups, the perception of Saxony-Anhalt as a founding state and to raise awareness among the target groups. The new online platform will go online in the second half of 2020. A broad marketing campaign will make the platform and its contents known in 2021.

Within the scope of the project, Univations will be responsible for project management, coordination, communication, content creation and evaluation. Partner of the project is the agency Kappa GmbH from Halle, which will develop and realise the campaign as well as its appearance.

The project Gründerland Sachsen-Anhalt is financed by the Ministry of Economics, Science and Digitisation, with funds from the European Social Fund and the State of Saxony-Anhalt.

Univations is project partner in the Strategic Partnership ARDENT- Advancing Rural Development through Entrepreneurship Education for Adults (2019-1-DE02-KA204-006491). The project is funded by the EU programme Erasmus+ (key action 2) and is located at the National Agency of the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (NA BIBB).

The Münster University of Applied Sciences leads the project which addresses the social and economic challenges of rural areas and aims to promote the transfer of skills from universities to adults in rural areas as well as entrepreneurial activities.

During the life time of the project, ARDENT will launch 5 Rural Councils in partner regions, perform a needs analysis and accordingly design and implement the Rural Entrepreneurship CBL program at partner Higher Educations Institutions (HEI).

Through workshops for the rural population are also intended to create capacities and networks and interactions between rural and urban communities.

Univations contributes its experience especially in the development of suitable methods and the creation of a so-called roadmap to specifically determine the needs of the rural population. Furthermore, partners from Croatia, Poland, the Netherlands and Portugal support the project with their expertise. The Anhalt University of Applied Sciences (FH) and the Halle Centre for Social Research e.V. are associated partners in this Erasmus+ project. The project runs from 1 October 2019 to 31 March 2022.

Project partners:

• Münster University of Applied Sciences, Germany (Coordinator)
• Univations GmbH, Germany
• Cracow University of Economics, Poland
• Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo, Portugal
•  J.J. Strossmayer University of Osijek, Croatia
• University Industry Innovation Network, Netherlands

Associated Partner:

• Anhalt University of Applied Sciences (FH), Germany
• Centre for Social Research Halle e.V., Germany

Starting in school year 2019/2020, Univations GmbH and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg offer digitally affine students from grade 8 onwards the participation in the project "Digital Talent Accelerator". The students have the opportunity to develop their real product or service idea from the digital environment into a marketable project within an interdisciplinary team. Thanks to the strong support of coaches and mentors from the IT start-up scene, the students receive the necessary, versatile knowledge at several weekend events.

The basic goals of the project are to motivate students to found IT start-ups, to support and accompany digitally inclined students in the development and implementation of a start-up idea and thus to promote digital competencies and soft skills by imparting methodological knowledge in the areas of "founding" and "digitization".

The Digital Talent Accelerator is part of the ego.-Existenzgründeroffensive of the State of Saxony-Anhalt and is funded by the Ministry of Economics, Science and Digitisation of Saxony-Anhalt and the European Social Fund (ESF). Univations GmbH - Institute for Knowledge and Technology Transfer and Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg are responsible for the coordination of the project.

The Investforum Startup Service with its services and offers is aimed at innovative start-ups that are accompanied on their way to becoming successful companies. In addition to individual coaching, the right business contacts are brought together at matching events such as the Investforum Pitch-Day. The Investforum Startup Service is the link between start-ups and investors as well as partners from business and science. Close cooperation between the individual target groups gives investors access to startups. In addition, companies learn about innovations and thus secure competitive advantages.

The Investforum Startup Service is funded by the Ministry of Economics, Tourism, Agriculture and Forestry with resources from the European Social Fund and the state of Saxony-Anhalt and coordinated by Univations GmbH Institute for Knowledge and Technology Transfer at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.

Since 2006, Univations GmbH has been implementing the school competition futurego Saxony-Anhalt. The aim of the competition is to familiarise young people from the eighth grade onwards with economic relationships already at school. By strengthening entrepreneurial skills, the aim is to motivate young people to set up their own businesses at an early age and to sustainably increase the number of student companies in the state.

futurego Saxony-Anhalt is coordinated by Univations and financed by the Ministry of Economics, Tourism, Agriculture and Forestry of Saxony-Anhalt with funds from the state and the European Union (European Social Fund).

With the project "Implementing Serious Games in Entrepreneurship Education" (ISGEE), Univations GmbH is a partner in one of the first trans-European initiatives in the field of "Serious Games". The focus of these games is not only on entertaining the user, but primarily on conveying learning content. Under the project management of the University of Szeged from Hungary, the Erasmus funded project focuses on so-called entrepreneurship education for students.

The aim is to develop a computer game that focuses on the one hand on the competence areas of entrepreneurial education according to the Entrepreneurship Competence Framework of the European Union and on the other hand on digital skills. ISGEE will provide lecturers with a practice-oriented program that will support them as an innovative teaching method in teaching entrepreneurship education to students. The software consists of different modules. This allows for an optimal combination of tools according to needs and areas of competence.

The total duration of the project is 3 years. Other partners are the Western University of Timisoara from Romania and the Technical University of Ostrava from the Czech Republic. In addition, the IT companies SC Expertissa from Romania and Stucom from Spain, which are specialised in "serious games", will contribute their expertise.

The Erasmus subsidised and Univations GmbH-led EU project "Partnership for Initial Entrepreneurship Teacher Education" (PIETE) focuses on the acquisition and development of entrepreneurial thinking and understanding in initial teacher education. In order to link the central topic areas - initial teacher education and entrepreneurial education - and thus ensure an optimal transfer of knowledge, the project relies on institutional tandem constellations during the three-year funding period. This means that university experts from both disciplines will cooperate with each other. Project partners are the University of Szeged, the University Industry Innovation Network, the MCI Management Center Innsbruck, the University of Education Tyrol, the University of Bielsko-Biala and the University of Economics and Business Administration Katowice. The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) acts as the project management agency.

In the first stage of the project, joint workshops will be held in order to develop a mutual understanding of the needs and functions of teacher training as well as of the transfer of entrepreneurial skills. In the course of these events the participants will be familiarized with the Entrepreneurship Competence Framework of the European Union, among other things. In addition, points of contact for the consideration of entrepreneurial education contents in initial teacher training will be identified. Based on this, the project partners will develop a modular teaching compendium that supports the development of entrepreneurial competence within teacher education.

PIETE is one of 19 strategic partnerships funded by the DAAD in Germany, which were selected for project funding in 2018. The project has a total duration of 3 years.

Voices from the PIETE Project
Florian Bratzke, Senior Project Manager at Univations and PIETE Project Coordinator, explains the importance of teachers' understanding of entrepreneurship education and what the PIETE Awareness Center means.

Mario Vötsch, lecturer at the University of Teacher Education in Tyrol, reports on the integration of entrepreneurial education into teacher training and on the Intellectual Output "Initial Teacher Education Framework".

Szabolcs Pronay, lecturer at the University of Szeged in Hungary, reports on capacity building for entrepreneurship education in initial teacher education.

Anita Zehrer, Head of Research at the Management Center Innsbruck, briefly explains how the PIETE Teaching Compendium contributes to the development of entrepreneurial education.

Anna Wieczorek from the University of Bielsko-Biala talks about PIETE tandems and the importance of integrating entrepreneurial education into teacher training in Poland.

Maciej Mitręga, a lecturer at the University of Economics in Katowice in Poland, reports on the PIETE discussion paper and his institution's role in assessing teachers' perceptions of entrepreneurship education.

Since 2019, Univations GmbH has been supporting the translation region for digitalised healthcare in the points: Alliance management, innovation management, financing and communication.

The alliance "Translational Region for Digitalised Health Care" (TDG) was selected by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the funding competition "WIR! - Change through Innovation in the Region". The aim of the project is to position itself as a "translational region for digital healthcare" with a focus on care. To this end, a model region is to be created in the south of Saxony-Anhalt in which new technologies can be brought from the idea to market maturity jointly by actors in health care and research, creative industries and IT. The overarching goals are to maintain autonomy in old age, in one's own living environment and to support the care process.

The stakeholders of the TDG project had successfully mastered the first step in 2019 and had been selected as a project for funding for the conception phase. This had been funded with 200,000 euros. Out of 32 finalists and originally more than one hundred applications, 20 projects have now prevailed for the implementation phase. The project alliance has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with up to eight million euros since April 2019. After a successful interim evaluation in early 2022, the project received a further 7 million euros.

The project is scheduled to run for a total of five years. It is one of 20 projects in eastern Germany to receive this funding as part of the programme "WIR! - Change through Innovation in the Region".

The Erasmus+ funded EU project "Young Entrepreneurial Teachers Initiative" (YETI) aims to develop methods to promote entrepreneurship education within teacher training and to put them into practice in order to reduce existing deficits in this area. It is a spin-off of the PIETE project, which is led by Univations.

YETI focuses on student teachers (for ISCED levels 3-4) who are gaining their first practical experience either through school placements or in the in-service 'induction phase' (Referendariat). Consequently, YETI will enable a first cohort of student teachers to promote entrepreneurial thinking and action in their teaching as soon as they start their professional careers in schools. An essential conceptual basis for this is the Entrepreneurship Competence Framework, which was developed by the Joint Research Center of the European Commission. This "competence framework" encompasses a broad understanding of entrepreneurial education and must first be taught to student teachers. This is precisely where one of Univations' central tasks within YETI ties in. Univations will guide the development of the "Conceptual Screening Report", in which the conceptual understanding of student teachers in relation to entrepreneurship education will be explored. For this purpose, a data collection at all participating teacher training universities will be conducted and evaluated via online survey. Furthermore, Univations supports the project management in the coordination of YETI - also on the basis of the experiences made in PIETE - and collaborates in the preparation of all further project results.

The Strategic Partnership is led by the Technical University of Ostrava from the Czech Republic and will run from 1 September 2020 to 31 August 2023. Univations was the lead partner for the application. YETI has received the best score of all applications submitted within the Czech Republic in the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership Programme (Call 2020).

Further project partners are:

• Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic (project management)
• University of Education Tyrol, Austria
• Bantani Education, Belgium
• University of Szeged, Hungary
• Technical and Humanistic Academy Bielsko-Biała, Poland
• University Industry Innovation Network - UIIN, Netherlands

With the project Embedding Entrepreneurship Education (EEE), Univations GmbH had taken over the project management within an Erasmus funded project for the first time since October 2016. Together with the University of Szeged (Hungary), the MCI Management Center Innsbruck (Austria), Canice Consulting (Northern Ireland) and the University Industry Innovation Network (Holland), Univations GmbH is intensifying its efforts to sensitise students to entrepreneurship.

Within the framework of the EEE project, high quality and practical entrepreneurship courses, handbooks to promote entrepreneurial thinking at universities (toolkits) as well as a number of other resources were developed over a period of 2 years. This should increase the number of entrepreneurial students at the universities involved in the project in the long term.

In addition, the teaching and learning materials produced within the project were made available online ("create commons"), whereby other universities or university-related institutions in the EU also benefit from the project results.