The Latin American and Caribbean higher education institutions, and the international entrepreneuship training. New oportunities with institutional networking and Open Education approach

Abstract

Higher-education institutions in LAC confront new complex demands of the society, in order to transfer knowledge to other actors for a better social and economic development. Particularly, one main goal is to promote innovation and development through entrepreneurship and start-ups. One relevant way to do this, are training programmes on entrepreneurship and innovation management Many HEI offers this kind of program at a national level. Unfortunately, they have a very different level of quality and in many cases lack of relation will be cultural and economic local conditions, mostly for SME. Two international initiatives cooperate to create a new offer for this social need, using innovative approaches on social networking and distance learning education. Those initiatives are, by one side the University Industry Network (UIN) and by the other one the EMundus Project. This paper reports the main objectives of both initiatives and the joint project they are working on for a pilot experience for training on entrepreneurship and innovation management, based on a virtual institutional network for distributed blended learning, with an Open Education approach and OER Tools.