The aim of the project is to develop a toolkit - a Toolbox - containing the business skills and knowledge needed at an early stage of an entrepreneur's career gaining the maturity to build a sustainable and crisis-proof business. The direct involvement of students and young researchers in the Toolbox development process will contribute to the creation of a tool that meets their real needs. The project is addressing the technology talent gap in BSR with a dedicated Toolbox for fostering DeepTech entrepreneurship - a set of readily available tools for inspiring students and young researchers to explore starting a business.

Deep Tech innovations have the potential to provide transformative solutions to global challenges, and increasing innovation in the economy provides better solutions to future crises while helping to strengthen its resilience.

The existing technology talent gap in the Baltic region can limit these processes, which is why efforts to increase the supply of startups and support entrepreneurship are so important, serving students and young researchers to explore startup opportunities. By inspiring potential startup founders and introducing entrepreneurial skills development at the pre-incubation stage, their chances of market success can be increased, that is why the Toolbox can increase their chance for market success.

One of core activities for the project was to build the relevant stakeholder group for each country through the cooperative networks of the partners and their affiliated organisations. The interaction with external organisations that support the project, provides the relevant stakeholders that give the best possible insight into the tools that exist and function in the partner regions. Meetings of the Regional Stakeholder Group are held on a regular basis and support the implementation of tasks.

In order to achieve the project objective, including the achievement of the set deliverables, the consortium has to implement the outlined project milestones, which will lead the project to the main objective of "Development of the final toolbox for fostering DeepTech entrepreneurship". Since the beginning of the project the partners focused on target group analysis, namely to identify needs of students and young researchers regarding upscaling entrepreneurial skills, then performed analysis of those needs and basing on results prepared jointly exploratory workshops scenarios, which are piloting the end output.

Survey of pre-incubation needs of students and young researchers

One of the primary activities was creation and conducting a "Survey of pre-incubation needs of students and young researchers". Thus, each of the partners, with significant participation of their own regional stakeholder groups, provided input to the survey, which was a preliminary proposal of tools for the Toolbox. The project consortium also developed the look of the survey and worked on a video promoting this survey, which explained the reasons for it conduction (link: https://app.visla.us/clip/1220809528291913728).

Each partner conducted a survey in their country, whichproved to be quite a challenge due to the difficulty of reaching the target group, however, after using different approaches depending on the country, parnters were able to collect responses from the target groups. The collected results of the survey were subjected to a comprehensive analysis, this included:

• topics of greatest interest to the target group (i.e., students and young scientists):
• suggestions for Improvement;
• regional differences in responses;
• SWOT analysis;
• gap analysis.

The results of the surveys were discussed very widely in the consortium and provided with a lot of information about what needs and gaps students and young researchers have. This survey provided critical insights into the support and resources to help them in the future to transit their ideas into viable projects. The data collected served as a foundation for refining project consortium's approach and tailoring subsequent activities, i.e. the Exploratory Worhshops Scenarios,to better address the specific needs identified.

Exploratory Worhshops Scenarios

Based on the findings from the Survey, we developed detailed scenarios for exploratory workshops. These workshops were designed to foster innovation and entrepreneurial thinking among participants (i.e. target group - students and young researchers). The scenarios were crafted to simulate real-world challenges and opportunities, enabling participants to apply theoretical knowledge in a practical context, thereby enhancing their problem-solving and critical-thinking skills and building their entrepreneurship-oriented awareness.

Key Performance Indicators & 2nd Feedback Survey

Within the activities of the Project’s 1st and 2nd Semester, the Partners have also jointly developed the draft of the BSR Deeptech Launch Student  post-workshop Survey – the 2nd Feedback Survey – and defined the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

KPIs are valuable to ensure the effective monitoring and evaluation of the project’s progress, that is why we established a set of them. They were carefully selected to measure various aspects of the project's impact, including participant engagement, knowledge acquisition, and the successful transition of ideas into actionable plans as well as the increase of the entrepreneurship-oriented knowledge. Then, the KPI’s have been consulted with the Project’s Regional Stakeholders Groups. This arduous process enabled for the most refined version of both the Workshops and the Survey to be developed. All this was made possible thanks to the significant help and feedback we have received from the Regional Stakeholders. To maintain a continuous feedback loop and improve project's activities, consortium designed and implemented the 2nd Feedback Survey. This Survey was aimed at capturing participants' experiences, satisfaction levels, and suggestions for improvement following the initial phase of the project.

What's next?

The insights gained from KPIs and 2nd Feedback survey will be invaluable in refining our approach and ensuring that our initiatives remain responsive to the needs of our target audience. This will help partners to develop a final form of the Exploratory Workshop Scenarios and the final output - Toolbox based on the findings and providing wide dissemination of project results. Toolbox development will involve stakeholders feedback at all stages ensuring high efficiency and applicability of tools. Real testimonials, interactions and role playing will be used  to empower students  to gain valuable insights and personal experience. Toolbox implementation will prepare students and young researchers to initiate business in any region and to cooperate transnationally.