Sustainable Development is no longer an issue of awareness rising, but an issue of careful analysis, action, and evaluation. What can generally be perceived is a change from analysing problems to implementing change: in operational practices, organisation, technology and strategy. Higher Education has made a similar change by becoming more solution oriented and less problem oriented.

What this project aims at is establishing a comprehensive offer on Education for Sustainable Innovation for the business sector, offered as micro training/consulting by professional training institutes and universities. The comprehensive offer is created by a transnational cooperation which aims at exchanging “best practices” across borders, among educational institutions, enterprises, non- profit organisations and public authorities. Moreover, needs in the business sector for green innovation will be analysed in order to shape this comprehensive offer, and in order to guide Sustainable Developmenteducation in higher education.

The overall aim of the project is to assist sustainable innovation competence uptake by enterprises and improve the sustainable innovation qualifications of higher education graduates.

The project will aim at reaching its goals by:

1. starting a process by which best practices in education for sustainable innovation will be identified

2. start a dialogue between educators and the business community about needs for sustainable innovation education

3. create a comprehensive offer of educational activities in the participating regions aimed at training corporate employees, from shop floor to executives, in contributing to sustainable innovation

4. base the planned education on thematic communication. In presenting the activity, the thematic communicator develops the theme in such a way that it will be highly relevant to the audience. According to studies, presenting a strongly relevant theme greatly increases the likelihood an interpreter will succeed in provoking an audience to think about theme-related issues. For this a joint seminar will be organised, for all partners, so that each partner will learn how to communicate their competencies as good as possible.

5. test the developed courses once in (members of) participating business organisations and universities

6. test at least one developed micro training/consulting at five companies that each participants cooperate with

7. evaluate and assess the results of these courses as input for a final, joint, conference

as output: a comprehensive list of best practices/materials that can be:

- offered as micro training/consulting

- used for transferring the competencies that the universities and educational institutions have to offer to enterprises regarding training corporate employees, from shop floor to executives

- guiding higher education towards improving its graduates to contribute to sustainable innovation

The transnational cooperation will lead to exchange of “best practices” across borders, among educational institutions, enterprises, non- profit organisations and public authorities. Many examples are at the moment not transferred to other educators. The proposed cooperation would provoke both learning among the business sector as within universities and spread good examples in the North Sea Region.

The aim is to support SMEs to turn environmental challenges into business opportunities (http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/public-consultation-green-action-plan/index_en.htm), based on the flagship initiatives under the Europe 2020 Strategy: A resource-efficient Europe (http://ec.europa.eu/resource-efficient-europe/index_en.htm) and an integrated industrial policy for the globalisation era (http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/industrial-competitiveness/industrial-policy/index_en.htm).

Sustainable Development is no longer an issue of awareness rising, but an issue of careful analysis, action, and evaluation. What can generally be perceived is a change from analysing problems to implementing change: in operational practices, organisation, technology and strategy. Higher Education has made a similar change by becoming more solution oriented and less problem oriented.

What this project aims at is establishing a comprehensive offer on Education for Sustainable Innovation for the business sector, offered as micro training/consulting by professional training institutes and universities. The comprehensive offer is created by a transnational cooperation which aims at exchanging “best practices” across borders, among educational institutions, enterprises, non- profit organisations and public authorities. Moreover, needs in the business sector for green innovation will be analysed in order to shape this comprehensive offer, and in order to guide Sustainable Developmenteducation in higher education.

a comprehensive offering of best educational practices/materials in each participating region. These might be:

- offered as micro training/consulting

- used for transferring the competencies that the universities and educational institutions have to offer to enterprises regarding training corporate employees, from shop floor to executives

- guiding higher education towards improving its graduates to contribute to sustainable innovation

The transnational cooperation will lead to exchange of “best practices” across borders, among educational institutions, enterprises, non- profit organisations and public authorities. Many examples are at the moment not transferred to other educators. The proposed cooperation would provoke both learning among the business sector as within universities and spread good examples in the North Sea Region.

• Magdalena Svanstrom, Chalmers University of Technology,

• Dik Fenner, Cambridge

We would especially like to cooperate with regional business associations