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News and Background Information on the Conference | |||
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Tackling the SME Sector
Together with the entrepreneurial association RETA, the project has been designed to help companies detect opportunities for innovation and to manage it within their own environment. A Strategic Approach“We started in June with a blended-learning programme for agents from RETA”, reports Otamendi. “In both online and face-to-face sessions, they study how innovative ideas can best be turned into practice within a company. By February 2008, 150 agents will have graduated from the course. They then visit the SMEs in the region and help them to adopt new ICT solutions to add innovation to their production or management strategies.” In a second step, EVA will also provide a training programme for the SMEs themselves. This strategic approach is essential, according to Otamendi, because it assures the best personalisation and rapprochement with the SMEs’ needs. Face to Face with the LearnerA different approach is used in a development and research project in Finland. OILI was designed to help and guide SMEs to enhance their skills in information technology (IT). The idea behind the OILI model is that IT education is provided to SMEs free of charge by local students during their practical training period in the companies and by using a teaching method called side-by-side training. “Most of the services, businesses and communication in Finland are moving to the Internet”, comments Petri Lounaskorpi, who heads the project at the University of Jyväskyla. “The need for in-service training has expanded. The educational institutions, schools, and others are doing their best to teach the youth the needed skills. The adults are marginalised in this process. There is a lack of proper educational alternatives, especially for those who are working in the small, medium or even micro-sized enterprise sector.” Recent findings from a Cedefop study confirm this notion. Small companies often have no learning culture and lack proper training materials. To compound the problem, managers in SMEs are not always willing or able to invest in the continuing education and training for the staff. A pilot implementation of the OILI model was carried out in central Finland during autumn 2005. The feedback received was throughout positive: educational institutions, enterprises and regional development enterprises found the model functional and useful. The IT competence and the potential for more extensive use of IT in the pilot enterprises improved. Furthermore, learners reported that their practical training was more versatile than before and that their employment opportunities in their home region increased. The project has raised interest and is in the process of being implemented in western Finland. Future plans call for it to be deployed in the rest of the country. These and other interesting projects will be presented in the session COR71 on Friday, November 30 at 16:30 - 18:00. For further details, please visit
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“Innovation is what is needed most here”, says Ainhoa Otamendi, who is responsible for the lifelong learning virtual space EVA that was recently established by the Andalusian Regional Ministry of Innovation, Science and Enterprise. With EVA, the government agency wants to support its regional economy, which mainly consists of small and medium-sized enterprises.
