Since 2020, in the context of a UN Development Account project titled “Strengthening innovation policies for SPECA countries in support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, UNECE has been supporting participating countries of the UN Special Programme for the Economies of Central Asia (SPECA) to strengthen their capacities to implement innovation policy for sustainable development and enhance sub-regional cooperation, including in the area of innovative entrepreneurship. Recent work has included a handbook on business incubators, online trainings, and a handbook on innovative high-growth enterprises in the SPECA sub-region (forthcoming).
Building on strong interest from the SPECA participating countries on the topic of business incubators, and to support implementation of the SPECA Innovation Strategy for Sustainable Development and its Action Plan, the SPECA Working Group on Innovation and Technology for Sustainable Development on 20 July 2022 welcomed a proposal to set up a SPECA Network of Business Incubators and Accelerators for Sustainable Development. This Network is a platform for dialogue and exchange on issues, challenges and solutions, as well as best practices related to innovative entrepreneurship support through business incubators (BI) and accelerators (BA) in the SPECA sub-region. The Network aims to enable peer learning and to strengthen the capacities of BI and BA to effectively support innovative firms in the sub-region.
This training will be the third of the activities of the Network. It will focus on the promotion of entrepreneurial culture in the education system through the development of business incubators at universities, which is a crucial element of innovation-led growth in the SPECA sub-region.
The training will demonstrate the primary benefits of encouraging entrepreneurship and start-ups within university academic processes. It will provide information and best practice examples on how to keep an educational institution competitive in an era of rapid change; how to create and develop the necessary components that improve the quality of education and are critical for students in the twenty-first century, and how to promote innovation for sustainable development.
Intended beneficiaries are representatives of the education system involved in the development of educational curricula, heads of higher education institutions, heads of departments at universities, university management, and scientific supervisors (employees of universities and of research institutions supervising projects of students).
The training will be delivered in Russian.