SEED+ is a collaborative project that brings together 7 full, 5 associated partners and 2 affiliated entities. The full partners are 3 academic institutions (UiT – the Arctic University of Norway, Technical University of Varna, Kyiv Academic University); 2 industry partners (VC funds and accelerators, G-Force/Founders Factory and FastTrack VC); 1 impact entrepreneur community (ImpactHub) and 3 innovation community (EIT Raw Materials, Innovation Hub CLC Baltic Sea and EIT Manufacturing Co-Location Center South).

The consortium partners come from all types of innovation regions: emerging, moderate, strong, leader based on the EIS-RIS 2021 which will help to make the results of the project visible to the wider European community.

---

---

Project Partners

UiT, the project coordinator, successfully runs several national and international initiatives, activities and projects, including CloudEARTHi project, which will be complementary to SEED+ project. The main role of UiT in this project will be to ensure the proper management, implementation and reporting of the project to the EC authorities. UiT is a founding member of the University of the Arctic, an international network of 160 study and research institutions of the circumpolar region, hosts several Norwegian Centres of Excellence and it has quite extensive local, national and international network. This will be particularly useful for the DEC activities and for the sustainability of the project results. UiT offers English taught courses at both bachelor’s and master’s level, so the new Venture Creation course will complement the already existing courses.

KAU and its innovation departments have been developing an innovation infrastructure for the past 3 years in close cooperation with the business community, local government, state institutions and society. Thus, KAU’s existing  (though disrupted) entrepreneurship support infrastructure, including coworking and event-space, fast-prototyping lab, media lab and NOSC-UA DIH (The Virtual Centre for Digital Innovation), will serve as a role model for the establishment of the University Enterprise Hubs at UiT and TUV. KAU has experienced lecturers and mentors in marketing, strategic management, project management, IP protection, technology transfer who will be involved in this project.

TUV is one of Bulgaria’s most prominent HEI in Engineering Technical Sciences. With access to its 152 laboratories, TUV will provide students with tutoring and technological support during development of product prototypes and pilots. This Institution has a strong network of partners on the local and national level, including the connections to municipalities and other universities; this will help the project to reach out to our target audience and ensure that all activities run at the university level will produce expected outputs.

To ensure that the project has a long-lasting impact on the wider European community, the EIT – RawMaterial will support the networking of HEIs with surrounding ecosystem actors, drawing on its wide variety of projects, activities and events.

G-FORCE will contribute by bringing their in-house experts (analysts and investors, public funding experts, sectoral coaches and managers) and additional external experts from the London’s office of Founders Factory who will share their know-how in entrepreneurship, startups formation and venture capital.

Fasttrack VC is a Private Investment Fund that invests in early-stage technology companies. It built a Matchmaking Investment Platform allowing investors to co-invest alongside FTVC. FTVC will be involved in the activities that aim to strengthen the capacity of the HEIs: organising the job shadowing, helping to set up University Enterprise Hubs and University Seed Funds.

Impact HUB, a global network focusing on building communities for impact and scale, will contribute to this project by bringing an extensive global network of entrepreneurs and innovators. Impact HUB operates in more than 63 countries all around the world. In SEED+, IH will help connect young entrepreneurs with their network of entrepreneurial ecosystems players. It will also help with carrying out the dissemination activities to ensure that the project results are vastly spread.

---

Associates

National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine), Karlshochschule University (Germany), Universita Degli Studi di Salerno (Italy),  Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), AI House (Ukraine) will help the project achieve its full potential and ensure that its results  have a long-lasting impact on the target audience in other than partner countries as they will transfer the results of SEED+ project into their local ecosystems. Associated universities are mostly interested in benefiting from having access to the VCC and the University Seed Fund methodologies.

AI House wishes to communicate project results and activities among the local startup community and support the startup competitions.