Capacity Building. Perspectives. Networks.

During the closing session of the final event of Better Incubation at the EVPA Annual Conference 2022, we asked the Better Incubation project managers of IHUB, EVPA and EBN to summarise their project experience in one word.

Lucia Radu, IHUB, highlighted the intense capacity building programme offered by Better Incubation through the Communities of Practice and the online Training Courses on Social Entrepreneurship, Inclusive Etrepreneurship and Impact Management and Measurement. More than a training opportunity, rather a dedicated space for BSOs to learn from peers and other relevant stakeholders committed to promote and support entrepreneurship as an opportunity for all in society – especially among the so-called Underrepresented and Vulnerable Groups.

Valeria Balzarini, EVPA, used the word perspective to explain how EVPA and its members used the Better Incubation project to rethink their approach to Underrepresented Entrepreneurs (UREs), this by connecting and working with BSOs and UREs directly.

Chiara Davalli, EBN, stressed the importance of Networks, of a Network of Networks like Better Incubation to achieve so many important results over a relatively short period of 2 years, where more than 133 entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs from URGs received incubation programmes from 21 organisations in 14 European countries. EBN, IHUB and EVPA, with the support and advice of Caritas Europa, ENSIE, EMES, Cooperatives Europe, managed to mobilise the European entrepreneurial ecosystem thanks to the active engagement of their members (EU|BICs, Impact Hubs and invesotrs for impact) who took this opportunity to rethink their programmes, their organisations and their ecosystems in a more inclusive and impact-driven way.

The event started in the morning with an EU Policy Workshop aimed at sharing and validating Better Incubation Policy Recommendations with policymakers, researchers, BSOs, investors for impact, regional development agencies, national agencies for social innovation and pan-European networks like Eurocities and Euclid. An interactive workshop where 25+ participants where asked to discuss the 6 issues identified by the project as the ones the entrepreneural ecosystem(s) in Europe need to consider and address to boost social and inclusive entrepreneurship in Europe.

Some of these policy recommendations were taken into account by Mrs Brigitte Fellahi-Brugneau, Head of Unit at DG Employment,  that during the afternoon session shared some reflections from the policymakers’ point of view on how Better Incubation contributed to promote and support social and inclusive entrepreneurship in Europe, by leveraging the knowledge, the competencies, the networks of mainstream business support organisations.

Then it was the turn of the Directors and Managers representing EVPA, IHUB and EBN who shared some insights on the relevance of the Better Incubation programme for their communities.

They all agreed that as organisations, the project offered a unique opportunity to grow knowledge, tools and methodologies for BSOs and investors for impact willing to broaden their scope to social and inclusive entrepreneurship. Moreover, Better Incubation enabled the three networks to involve their members and let them cooperate directly, this leading to new partnerships, opportunities and wider impact.

The event continued with the VOICES of Better Incubation: seven “ah-ah moments” telling the stories of EU|BICs, Impact Hubs, Investors for Impact and other stakeholders involved in the project activities. Regional policy workshops’ organisers, inclusive incubation programmes managers, CoPs experts and facilitators, trainings and networking events’ participants, investors mentoring winners of the Better Incubation Contest, Scaling Impact. These the perspectives represented in this crowded and emotional panel, a conversation that showed how Better Incubation successfully managed to kick-start an ecosystemic change in the incubation ecosystem.

Last but not least, the winners of the Better Incubation Contest were on stage to share how the scaling programme of Better Incubation project is helping them understanding and moving the first steps into new markets in Europe.

Believe, dare, learn and amplify your impact without giving up! This in a nutshell their advice to would-be entrepreneurs!

It was a great conclusion of two years of intense project activities. You can still watch the Better Incubation Project Finale recordings online!

Over 80 international business support experts, thought leaders, and innovation practitioners gathered in Lipica, Slovenia, for the 2022 EBN Techcamp powered by Better Incubation. Stemming from 26 different European and neighbouring countries, participants discussed the importance of diversity in entrepreneurship support.

Techcamp showcased experiences and strategies and co-developed innovation support programs to give the European innovation ecosystem a competitive advantage by embracing diversity and an impact-driven approach to supporting (tech) entrepreneurship.

It was held on the 19^th and 20^th of October in Lipica, Slovenia, to explore the European innovation ecosystem’s untapped potential in becoming more inclusive and diverse and how to re-strategize, upskill and expand business support services to service a new generation of impactful start-ups. It was co-hosted by EU|BIC Inkubator Sežana and was powered by Better Incubation, a project funded by the European Union Programme for Employment and Social Innovation.

Inkubator Sežana is one of our quality-certified EU|BICS who decided to join the Better Incubation project. They quickly became an example for the community by designing a successful and effective incubation support programme for hearing-impaired entrepreneurs. Their motivation and success, as well as the celebration of their 30^th anniversary, are one of the sources of inspiration that brought the EBN Techcamp to Lipica.

The EBN Techcamp is the second of our yearly events and the one that most showcases methodologies, practices, techniques, and tools that the community can bring back to their country and region to better support entrepreneurial innovation. This year, our focus on impact-driven and inclusive entrepreneurship is in large part because we know the challenges the community is facing. We wanted to empower them with the tools that can bring long-lasting resolutions – by increasing the pool of entrepreneurs, diversifying the type of companies they support, and more completely investing in their region’s (sustainable and social) economic development.

Laura Lecci, CEO at EBN

As remarked by the EC and the OECD, inclusive entrepreneurship is an integral part of growth. A widespread business creation by people of all groups helps generate jobs and combat social and financial exclusion while stimulating economic growth. Evidence shows that women, youth, seniors, immigrants, and people with disabilities are often underrepresented in the entrepreneurial space and, on average, less likely to succeed in creating high-growth firms due to a lack of networks, and access to finance, and less adequate ways to gain skills needed grow a company. At the same time, social enterprises are longstanding agents of inclusive growth and have proved remarkably resilient in the face of economic adversity. By design, social enterprises address socioeconomic challenges in innovative ways and engage citizens to become part of the solution.

Over 8 parallel deep-dive sessions, the 2022 EBN Techcamp offered EU|BICs, and BSOs a space to share, debate, and test practices, methods and tools for impact-driven and inclusive entrepreneurship promotion and support. Some of them resulted from the involvement of EBN and IHUB members in 21 Better Incubation pilots that led to new inclusive incubation programmes that involved more than 130 entrepreneurs over 6 months. Tools, methods, and recommendations have been shared during the Techcamp, and are also available in the Better Incubation Toolkit, the Better Incubation Collection of Best Practices, the Inspirational Videos, and the upcoming Better Incubation Insights Paper (focus on programmatic level) and the Better Incubation Roadmap (focus on organizational level).

Photos by Jan Antonac from VSS Sežana

There is evidence that business incubators and business accelerators can be effective supports for new and growing businesses, and evaluations suggest similar results can be achieved in business incubators that focus on supporting entrepreneurs from underrepresented and disadvantaged groups. The keys to success for these initiatives include offering strong preincubation services, building strong linkages with mainstream business support providers and investors, delivering support in flexible modules, and ensuring incubator staff is trained to support the targeted entrepreneurs.

This year’s EBN Techcamp empowered its participants to support a new generation of impactful tech start-ups – companies that are both profitable and work to improve society, operating ‘’double bottom line’’ business models – and to leverage diversity and inclusion and become relevant, competitive, and gain an advantage.

Cristina Fanjul, President of EBN

The event counted on the contribution of many local and international speakers who shared their experiences and best practices for innovation support. Speakers included: Dr. Aida Kamišalić Latifić, the secretary of state at the Slovenian Ministry of Digital Transformation, and David Škabar, Mayor of Sežana, who spoke of the importance of innovation and digitalization in Slovenia for its future; Cristina Fanjul, EBN President, Dorijan Maršič, Director at Inkubator Sežana, both addressing the importance of increased inclusivity for the future of European innovation and sharing their personal experience in the subject; and Tobias Temmen, Venture Partner at Kellogg-WHU, Stanford Change Labs, Andreja Jaklič, Professor at the University of Ljubljana – Faculty of Social Science, and Flora Rosenow, Global Brand Strategy & Communication for Impact expert, who lead workshops on the creation of incubation modules, guaranteeing its societal value from innovation ecosystems, and measuring and communicating its value to others – respectively.

Better Incubation is a joint initiative of EBN, Impact Hub and EVPA, funded by the European Union, to kickstart an “eco-systemic” change by bringing incubation and business support services closer to society as a whole and to promote entrepreneurship and self-employment as means to create jobs, develop skills, and give the unemployed and vulnerable an opportunity to fully participate in the economy and improve the inclusivity of our societies (www.betterincubation.eu)

About this Toolkit

This Toolkit is a comprehensive collection of handson tools and methodologies for business support organisations aiming to make their incubation and other business support programmes more inclusive and accessible. The Toolkit is based on the experience and exchange among members of the Communities of Practice of the Better Incubation initiative.

It invites managers and contributors to incubation and other business support services to an honest analysis of their practices and gives them tools to go beyond the usual suspects as participants in their programmes.

Being based on the experiences of the inclusive pilot programmes run within the Better Incubation framework, it is not an exhaustive list but offers itself as a starting point for all business support organisations to go beyond the status quo, i.e., mainstream entrepreneurship. This pilot has been running in many European countries: Spain, Portugal, United Kindom, France, Luxemburg, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italt, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.

How to use the Toolkit

The Toolkit is organised in line with the common steps of designing and running a business support
programme. You can easily navigate these different steps below and jump directly to where you are at, or you can read from beginning to end to get a better grasp of the many facets and perspectives when it comes to inclusion and accessibility in incubation and business support. For each step, different tools are listed and you can pick out what best fits your reality.

Speaking of the steps of designing and implementing a business support programme: one important suggestion this Toolkit makes is to add step 2: Removing barriers to processes of developing and running business support programmes. Transforming your spaces and offerings to be more inclusive is not a one-time moment. It needs to happen throughout the programme cycle. However, having accessibility as a step just like “designing the programme” or “selecting participants” highlights the importance of gaining awareness about barriers that people may face in accessing programmes. This approach resonates with a wider mission of the Better Incubation project of placing incubators as catalysts in the entrepreneurship ecosystems and thus allowing them to go beyond their intermediary role.

The 5 Groups in Focus

Woman

The European business and entrepreneurship ecosystem is far from being diverse and inclusive. According to the OECD report , women were half as likely as men to be self-employed , while the share of women who started their own business only increased by 2%. This gap can be explained by deep structural imbalances against female business founders, such as lack of access to finance, low opportunity perception regarding entrepreneurship among women, lack of role models or competing demands on time, with a double burden on home and work responsibilities for women.

Migrants and Refugees

In 2020, the number of refugees and asylum seekers in Europe increased to an unprecedented 23 million . Entrepreneurship therefore represents a great opportunity for refugees and other migrants to rebuild their lives and contribute to the economy and society in their new home country. Relevant business support services can help address these challenges, but it needs to be accompanied by a change of mindset in the sector to better reflect on the real needs of migrant entrepreneurs.

Youth

Youth unemployment represents one of the major social and economic challenges in Europe, with more than 16.5% of them being unemployed in 2018 . In response to the challenges the youth encounters when searching for jobs, entrepreneurship offers an alternative pathway to economic self-sufficiency. Critical success conditions can be provided by training and incubation programmes targeted at the youth to nurture their entrepreneurial attitudes and skills.

Seniors

With the ongoing demographic change and the ageing population in Europe, supporting entrepreneurial skills and becoming self-employed could be considered as innovative ways for middle-aged group workers to continue their professional activity . These include difficulties with mastering digital skills, health issues or social isolation. These demographic changes also affect business incubation support services because a new growing client group is emerging.

People with disabilities

The complexity of this group stems from the fact that disabilities are extremely diverse and are not fixed characteristic of individuals . People with disabilities face many barriers in the labour market, and employer discrimination is frequently reported.

Tools for…

1. Desinging inclusive support programmes
   1. Empathy interviews
   2. Co-creation with organisations in the field
   3. Personas
   4. Flexible modular design
2. Removing barriers
   1. Analyse application data
   2. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
   3. Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Training
3. Scouting for and selecting diverse participants
   1. Community Mapping
   2. Channels Mapping
   3. Equity-informed selection
4. Delivering the right programme support
   1. Needs assessement
   2. Business model basics
   3. Safer space
   4. Onion principle and confidence building
5. Connecting participans to supportive people
   1. Intentional mentor matching
   2. Purposeful hosting
   3. Peer-to-peer support
6. Facilitating access to capital
   1. Map funding possibilities
   2. Pitch training
   3. Offer funding
7. Manageing impact
   1. Impact mesurement platform
   2. Exit interviews with participants
   3. Competence framework

You can find more informaton HERE

The sixth issue of the Better Incubation Newsletter describes the upcoming opportunities :

• Better Incubation Contest 2022 | Scaling Impact – deadline to apply is September 1st, 2022
• Better Incubation Toolkit is out
• Future activities and events
• Focus on the upcoming Switch Pitch appointments

Find out more information about Better Incubation news by reading the newsletter here : Better Incubation Newsletter 6_August 2022