The first European EntreComp Awards were presented during the Being Entrepreneurial 2022 event held on 22 November 2022 in Brussels, with the participation of experts, representatives of research projects, and policy leaders from various European countries. The Awards are a new initiative by the European Commission aimed at recognising the contribution of individuals and organisations that have demonstrated outstanding achievements in cultivating entrepreneurial capacity across Europe, using as a basis and inspiration the EntreComp framework (European Framework of Reference for Entrepreneurship Competence).
Entrepreneurship competence is one of the 8 key competences of lifelong learning, in line with the Council of the European Union Recommendation updated in 2018. EntreComp offers a broad definition of this core competence that aims to create additional value, which can have not only an economic dimension but also a cultural or social one. It embraces different types of entrepreneurship, such as intrapreneurship, as well as social, green and digital entrepreneurship. Thus, EntreComp is a comprehensive tool that can be used in a variety of ways as a reference framework for initiatives around the world aimed at cultivating the entrepreneurial capacity of individuals and/or groups.
The EntreComp Awards are divided into 4 categories: Supporter, Explorer, Practitioner and Champion. During the event, Panagiotis Kampylis, Policy and Data Analyst at EKT, received the prestigious EntreComp Champion award and was appointed as a member of the jury that awards the remaining awards.
P. Kampylis participated in the writing team of the EntreComp Framework, which was published in 2016 by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the EU. He has also co-ordinated, among other things, the translation of the EntreComp framework into Greek, which is available in the Digital Library of the Operational Programme ‘Education and Lifelong Learning’ developed and made available by the National Documentation Centre (EKT). In addition to Greek, the framework has been translated into many other languages including Spanish, Arabic and Chinese.
Indicative of the impact of EntreComp is the fact that according to GoogleScholar it has more than 1,000 citations while there are many research projects and policy initiatives that use it as a reference framework in Europe and beyond. Several of these applications have been referenced in the report released by the JRC in 2018 entitled EntreComp Into Action, and a very active user community has been created (EntreComp Community). EntreComp Community, is a growing network of experts and organisations and is co-ordinated by a series of actions funded by the European Commission such as EntreComp Europe, EntreComp360, 2 BDigital, Digital Firefly and Women Learning Together .
Finally, it must be noted that EKT promotes entrepreneurship capacity in many ways. Businesses, academic institutions, research and development organisations have access to networking, mentoring, information and education services. As co-ordinator of Enterprise Europe Network Hellas, the Greek node of the Enterprise Europe Network, the largest business support network in the world, it provides services complementary to those of the National Contact Points for European programmes, for international networking and search for business and technological collaborations, technology transfer and innovation, access to European funding and finding partners to participate in research Proposals. EKT is also the hub in Greece of EIT Health, one of the largest European public-private partnerships for health innovation.
