In the first year and a half since the start of the project, aUPaEU has made great strides in laying the groundwork for the next year's work and achieving our first results.

Our deliverables show the progress we have made.

The aUPaEU project, with its Agora platform at its core, represents a paradigm shift in supporting HEI transformation. By addressing the fragmented nature of information systems, providing value-added acceleration services, and facilitating stakeholder identification, Agora sets a new standard for empowering HEIs across Europe to achieve their digital transformation aspirations. This unified information ecosystem serves as a transformative foundation for unlocking the true potential of acceleration services.

The Agora platform emerges as a transformative catalyst for HEIs, empowering them to navigate the complexities of digital transformation with greater agility and achieve their strategic goals. By leveraging Agora, HEIs can: Gain comprehensive insights into their own resources and expertise , Identify and connect with suitable partners , Receive personalised recommendations for acceleration services .

The establishment of the Agora necessitates the selection of a technical platform that effectively addresses the identified challenges, particularly the complex business processes involved in offering and consuming the acceleration service catalogue.

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The Institutional Transformation of HEIs in line with the Higher Education Transformation Agenda is a major challenge that requires careful planning and allocation of resources. It can be beneficial to observe and learn from more advanced alliances, identify operating good practices, and adopt them to manage changes. Transformation efforts should consider and learn from best practices.

In this context, it is beneficial to provide an inventory of operating acceleration services at Unite! and EPICUR partner universities, to display and explain the business processes that are part of the Agora platform and to offer an action plan for the implementation of the Higher Education Transformation Agenda. These three aspects respectively provide: empirical data about operating services at EPICUR and Unite! partner universities and offers an outline of potential acceleration services to be implemented in the Agora platform; a conceptual understanding of the Agora in terms of its underlying processes and user relation; a preliminary recommendation for HEIs and Alliances on how to achieve institutional transformation in accordance with the Higher Education Transformation Agenda.

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The aUPaEU project recognizes the need for acceleration services to expedite the transformative process of HEIs. By integrating these services into the higher education sector, the project aims to accelerate institutional transformations and contribute to the establishment of a single European market for R&I.

One of the direct objectives of aUPaEU is the creation of an acceleration services catalogue, which will consist of collections of related offers, reflecting a collaborative approach to HEI transformation.

The methodology for identifying the initial set of acceleration services is rooted in design thinking methods, which prioritise a predominantly bottom-up approach with elements of top-down input.

In the process of selecting the initial set of services , a comprehensive approach that combined bottom-up and top-down criteria was employed. This would ensure that the chosen services could effectively address stakeholders' needs while aligning with institutional goals and priorities: Value to Stakeholders, Feasibility and Strategic Alignment.

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A rigorous methodology has been outlined for the acceleration services assessment tests to verify that the aUPaEU services and the Agora can support HEIs in accelerating their institutional transformation. The testing process will be an iterative endeavour, continuously verifying the effectiveness of acceleration services in both platform implementation and process execution. This approach ensures a responsive and adaptive methodology that remains aligned with the evolving needs of the user groups throughout the digital transition. The designed methodology includes qualitative and quantitative data collection, such as: Iterative focus groups sessions, Interviews, Surveys and Platform usability testing. 

The main objectives of these tests are: 1) Test the acceleration services developed with identified user groups; 2) Validate the Minimum Viable Solution (MVS) of the Agora of acceleration services; 3) Monitor how the developed services facilitate user advancement in institutional transformation towards future universities. These transformations focus on six areas of the HEI agenda: capacity, infrastructure, and resource sharing; researcher career attractiveness; collaboration with R&I ecosystem actors; open science; societal outreach; and gender equality.

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Communication and dissemination activities aim to engage and inform users of the project's primary findings and activities. The main goals of aUPaEU’s communication and dissemination strategy involve providing universally comprehensible information on the project goals and results, increasing the project’s visibility, promoting cooperation and active involvement of actors and stakeholders, and creating communication models that facilitate the involvement of actors and stakeholders.

Stakeholders mapping:  Research and Innovation is an area that will continue to grow in importance in the foreseeable future, and therefore stakeholders’ participation is crucial. Stakeholder identification processes have been used to identify macro categories of stakeholders involved in R&I in Europe, which are the stakeholders of the aUPaEU: citizens, HEIs and research institutions, University alliances, HEI and research institutions networks, public administration, Industry and businesses.

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Collaboration with Sister Projects

aUPaEU continues its relationship with Sister Projects CATALISI  and Accelerate Future HEI . The three projects are collaborating and aligning to maximise the impact on the european higher education landscape.

The first outcome is the development of a joint Policy Brief.  

 In this mission, the project uses seven acceleration services tailored to HEIs, including Living Labs, Design Lab for Transformational Pathways: strategy and agenda setting, Counselling, Reinforcement of Human Capital: Capacity building & outreach, Predictive studies on Skills Anticipation, Community of Practice (CoP) and a marketplace for funding opportunities and collaborations.

During the first year of the project, the consortium produced seven deliverables that have been approved by the European Commission. We would like to present 4 of them here.   Firstly,  detailed analysis   (D1.1-Acting-LLs Needs Assessment) carried out by each of the seven Implementers to explore and assess the local context, barriers and framework conditions influencing the transformation process, the CATALISI universities-partners, with the support of the facilitating partners, successfully formulated their  Action Plans​​​​  and managed to define their strategy and individual pathway for their institutional transformation (D1.2-Acting-LLs Action Plans).  Furthermore,    through  Reinforcement of Human Capital: Capacity building & outreach – one  of the seven acceleration services  - the CATALISI consortium developed    guidelines for the set-up and organization of Mobilization and Mutual Learning (MML) workshops and Twinning schemes  ( D2.1-Knowledge sharing and Mutual Learning Plan ).  MML workshops and Twinning will assist HEIs in acquiring knowledge of workable solutions that can be implemented in their context at institutional level.   Finally,  the framework of the counseling service was defined ( D3.1-Coordination And Definition Of Counseling Service ). The counseling service will be performed  as a cross-cutting service available throughout the duration of the project for implementers (HEIs) based on their identified needs. 

These statements are based on pre-scanning and focus groups where each testing partner developed a strategic vision towards becoming an Entrepreneurial & Innovative University. Here you can discover each institution’s Strategic Vision Statement that describes their desired transformation high-level objective as well as their motivations, ambitions and strengths to achieve it.

The Synthesis Report: Key findings on current state analysis summarises the findings and insights, showing common and specific challenges associated with the institutional transformation across all testing partners. It includes the research and activities undertaken by the nine HEI testing partners including pre-scanning, and asset mapping, desired future state focus groups and a current state survey. The key learnings and findings include Entrepreneurial Activities, Entrepreneurial Mindset, Organisational Support and Impact & External Ecosystem.

Accelerate Future HEI has made improvements in enhancing the capabilities of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) across Europe, empowering them to drive social and economic development. Hear directly from their perspectives in the video collection .