Guide for new business and research ideas

The Erasmus+ Advan2Tex program had an ongoing period of two years: Sept. 2014 – Aug. 2016. It had for the first year two main objectives:

-          Accomplishing of 7 modules on advanced textile fields in 5 European languages

-          Configuring and implementing an e-learning platform for online use of the 7 modules

The second year of the project was focused on valorizing the performed e-learning platform by:

-          Workshops for dissemination

-          Blended mobility courses for a target group of trainees (professionals in the textile industry, young entrepreneurs, students in higher textile education)

-          Joint staff events, which are training events between the project’s partners with the following objectives:

• A guide for Intercultural partnership
• A guide for best practices in the field of the courses
• A guide for upgrading the e-learning platform
• A guide for new research and business ideas

The Guide for new research and business ideas was accomplished within the 5 Joint staff events of the project, each one hosted by a project partner. A joint staff training event had a duration of 5 working days and they had the following schedule:

Each partner participated with 4 representatives to each Joint staff event. Each participant had to prepare and present a project idea to be discussed in the plenary session of the training event. This activity had the following objectives:

-          Deepening the knowledge in the area of research of the partner’s representative

-          Performing of new links to the work of other researchers and of connections in order to elaborate new partnership projects

-          Preparing of new project proposals within existing transnational calls on European level

-          Developing of direct support between the partners on research topics

Hence, this Guide represents the result of the brokerage events for new project ideas. Since 4 representatives of each of the 5 partners participated at the 5 JSEs it resulted, as foreseen in the project proposal, a number of 100 project ideas. From these 100 presented and supported project ideas, a number of 30 project ideas was selected for the Guide.

This selection process included some selection criteria which will be detailed in chapter 3.

The Guide includes the following elements (summary):

1. An Introduction to the Advan2Tex project
2. A clustering of the 100 project ideas on main research topics
3. The selection criteria for the 30 project ideas
4. The presentation of the 30 project ideas in a dedicated template
5. Conclusions

Figure 1: Valorization of the project outcomes within the blended course in Giurgiu