The OBCD – Open Business for Community Development project was successfully showcased at the 6th International Conference of Development and Economy (I.CO.D.ECON 2024), held at the University of the Peloponnese in Kalamata, Greece. Representatives from University of Patras (UPatras) delivered an engaging presentation, highlighting the project’s significant progress and outcomes.
The presentation emphasized the project’s role in advancing community development by promoting social entrepreneurship and the ecosystem approach. Attendees were shown how the OBCD project applies open business models to empower local communities, demonstrating the potential of innovative business approaches to drive positive social change. Key aspects of the project, including the OBCD learning materials, MOOC, ecosystems, and service platform, were presented. In addition to the University of Patras, representatives from the University of Valladolid (Spain) and Olympic Training and Consulting (Greece) participated in the session. The discussions that followed were highly interactive, with participants exchanging insights and best practices related to social entrepreneurship, open innovation, and community development.
The conference in general provided a valuable platform for sharing knowledge and fostering collaboration among stakeholders in the social entrepreneurship sector. The OBCD project remains at the forefront of developing innovative approaches to empower communities through social entrepreneurship. The participating OBCD partners explored the potential for new synergies, opportunities to connect the project with other initiatives and discuss future collaborations to further exploit the project’s results.
Successful presentation of the OBCD research results at the Mini Symposium on Social Economy and Entrepreneurship – I.CO.D.ECON, October 11, 2024
On October 11, the I.CO.D.ECON conference hosted a Mini Symposium on Social Economy and Entrepreneurship focused on opportunities and challenges. During this event, OBCD project partners from the University of Patras and the University of Valladolid (Spain) had the chance to present the research results of the OBCD training needs analysis.
The University of Valladolid (Spain) team introduced the new SEntreComp framework developed by OBCD. Their presentation titled “SEntreComp: Entrepreneurial Competences for Social Entrepreneurs Based on EntreComp” explored the essential entrepreneurial competencies required in the social economy sector. The team emphasized the importance of the newly proposed SEntreComp framework, presenting the research methodology that was followed and the additional competences identified for social entrepreneurship. They also discussed how the adaptation of the existing EntreComp framework can meet the specific needs of social enterprises. The discussion followed explored the potential of the SEntreComp to become a structured framework for the development and evaluation of competencies in the entire third sector.
The UPatras team presented the finding of the emerging skills and occupations mapping in the social enterprises sector. Under the presentation “Training Needs for the European Social Enterprise Sector: Comparative Analysis in Four EU Countries”, they provided valuable insights into the training needs within the social enterprise sector across four EU countries. They also presented the mixed-methods research approach used, that combined qualitative and quantitative analysis. The findings from the comparative analysis presented revealed critical skill gaps and identified new occupations emerging in the social economy sector, highlighting areas that need to be addressed to enhance the capacity of social enterprises and foster community development.
