Impact case study database

IICED The International Institute for Creative Entrepreneurial Development (IICED) was established in 2014 by Professor Andrew Penaluna and Associate Professor Kathryn Penaluna and has been described by the EU Joint Research Centre as one of the world’s foremost institutions in developing creativity-based entrepreneurship education. IICED’s aim is to inform international best practice in enterprise, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial teaching, learning and evaluation. The interventions detailed below have informed the development of entrepreneurship education in 42 countries.

UK - Quality Assurance Agency’s Graduate Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Group

Prior to the current REF cycle, but ongoing in the 2018 review and update, Prof. A, Penaluna conceptualized and chaired the Quality Assurance Agency’s Graduate Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Group (2011 to date) which developed the QAA’s Education, Enterprise and entrepreneurship guidance: Guidance for UK higher education providers (2012). Following a proposal from the UK Prime Minister Theresa May (letter dated 28/11/2016) Penaluna was invited to chair the development of updated QAA Guidance. The revision drew on research reported in a, b, d, and e, and was published and launched in January 2018 (6) . At its 2018 relaunch, the guidance was described as a landmark document by the British Government’s Chief Entrepreneurial Adviser Prof. Tim Dafforn, while a joint OECD / EU literature review concurred (7), calling it an influential taxonomy in the field. The OECD / EU review highlights the unique key aspects of the Gateway Triangle, first proposed by IICED’s Jones, Penaluna, Penaluna and Matlay (g). The QAA guidance now provides the benchmark for all UK universities, and has also been adopted by Enterprise Educators UK (for whom Prof. A, Penaluna is a Fellow), who represent 115 HE providers, mostly Universities. The guidance has also had significant impact in European policy development with the European Commission and United Nations, and Internationally, with China, as well as in the Welsh national context, as detailed below. Later in 2018 Penaluna also joined the team of 13 authors that produced the Learning and Teaching section of the UK Quality Code for Higher Education.

EU - European Policy Development.

Since Aug 2013 Prof. A, Penaluna has entered a period of significant engagement across Europe helping to craft the development of enterprise and entrepreneurship education throughout the continent. In 2014 Andy Penaluna was invited to speak at the EU Thematic working group on Entrepreneurship Education, and met with the EU Director General for Enterprise to discuss the QAA guidance and underpinning research (b, c). In 2016 Kathryn Penaluna keynoted at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on behalf of IICED, presenting research reported in c, d & f, and sat alongside the European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility on an expert panel on youth and employment. Following this high-level engagement, IICED played a leading role in developing the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s work on entrepreneurial competency development, published as EntreComp: The Entrepreneurship Competence Framework (2016) (8). IICED were engaged in EntreComp’s development from outset, leading in areas related to creativity, future visioning and working in situations of ambiguity and risk. The framework, which can be used as a basis for the development of curricula and learning activities fostering entrepreneurship as a competence, was launched by the European Commission in 2016. It serves as a key driver for the development of the entrepreneurial capacity of European citizens and organisations is one of the key policy objectives for the EU and Member States, and is set to become a reference de facto for any initiative aiming to foster entrepreneurial capacity of European citizens. EntreComp is now embedded into the European Union Key Competences Framework and accepted by all European Member States. It has thus far been translated into 15 languages while increasingly being used to inform and underpin curriculum reforms both in the EU and partner countries bordering the EU.

The pioneering work in North Macedonia and the Balkans Region.

Concurrent with the development of the EntreComp framework, in 2016, Eurydice (a network of 43 national units based in all 38 countries of the Erasmus+ programme) reported that no country in Europe had fully integrated entrepreneurial education in schools and that teacher training was fragmented. However, supported by a successful bid the World Bank’s Skills Development and Innovation Support Project, North Macedonia introduced the world’s first compulsory and progressively evaluated Entrepreneurship and Innovation curriculum in 2015, following policy decisions made in 2014 at government level by the President, Deputy Prime Minister, Education and Science, Economy and Labour and Social Affairs. IICED research informed this policy development and jointly led the project in partnership with North Macedonia’s National Centre for Development of Innovations & Entrepreneurial Learning (NCDIEL). The resultant ‘Methodology Matrix’ progression model starts with primary children who investigate who an entrepreneur is, right through to Entrepreneurial Leadership experience for those aged 17–18 (9) has now been used to teach an estimated 55,000 pupils. Concurrently, IICED were employed by the South East Europe Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (SEECEL) to develop EU funded pilot entrepreneurial schools in Albania; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Croatia; Kosovo; Macedonia; Montenegro; Serbia and Turkey. IICED led the ISCED level 3 learning outcome framework and designed the entrepreneurial school methodology. By the conclusion of the project in 2016 in Šibenik, Croatia, 245 different teacher development plans had been produced by 2408 teachers, 44,314 teachers had engaged and 51,171 beneficiaries were recorded.

United Nations Policy Development and the OECD.

Other International work includes 8 years (Prof. A, Penaluna, 2011 to 2019) as an expert advisor on education to the United Nation’s Chief of Entrepreneurship Fiorina Mugione on the updating and development of their 37 country Empretec Program, based on the body of research undertaken by IICED (a). Empretec is a flagship capacity-building programme of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) for the promotion of entrepreneurship and micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs) to facilitate sustainable development and inclusive growth. By 2018 the Empretec network had expanded to 477,000 and based on UN figures, 160,000 had received the training by the end of that year, with increasing numbers suggesting an estimated total of 210,000 by the end of 2020 (1). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in partnership with the European Commission developed practice and policy documents that fed into EntreComp (c), and Penaluna was one of 4 experts commissioned to lead the advisory panel that produced the HE Level assessment tool HEInnovate ‘EPIC’ in 2020 (7).

Developments in East and South East Asia

While IICED’s work has had a significant focus in the UK and European context, there have also been international impacts in East and South East Asia. On 16/2/2016 one of China’s major state newspapers, Guangming Daily, reported that QAA guidance was the “most experienced…the world’s first national-level guidelines on quality assurance in this field.” An official Chinese translation of the QAA guidance was co-launched in 2018 and the National Centre for Entrepreneurship Education in China is employing it in response to government directives to embed enterprise and entrepreneurship into all HEIs. Subsequently, NCEE China (for whom Prof. Penaluna is Chair of Directors) has been designated by the Chinese State Council as an International Distinguished Organisation and a formal agreement with Beijing Municipal Education Committee has been signed, representing a reported 1,200 HEIs. Similarly, in Thailand and with the support of Welsh Government through Big Ideas Wales a new Guidance Document for Vocational Education was developed based on the QAA work, with trials ongoing in 5 colleges.

UK - National Strategy Development.

In 2013 the Minister for Education and Science David Willets invited IICED to contribute to a report on developing entrepreneurial education at all levels, which following research gathered via the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Micro Business, was published in 2014 as An Education System fit for an Entrepreneur . Further work with BIS / BEIS followed and culminated in Andy Penaluna receiving a Queens Award for Enterprise Promotion. He later joined the Enterprise Group under the Chief Scientific Officer for Enterprise, and contributed to the UK Industrial Strategy with advice on the potential for educational pipelines. ( a, c, g, e). Other work related to the QAA guidance includes a guide on educator standards produced by the Institute of Enterprise and Entrepreneurs in collaboration with the sector skills body Small Firms Development Initiative. As QAA’s Chair, Penaluna received their educator award at House of Lords in 2014.

Wales: Curriculum Development.

At a devolved level in Wales, IICED worked with Welsh Government on forward-facing policy drivers for schools in Wales offered insights that closely aligned to the evolving entrepreneurial education agenda at the EU level. This work followed Graham Donaldson’s review of Curriculum and Assessment Arrangements in Wales (Donaldson, 2015) and IICED was commissioned in 2018 by Welsh Government’s Curriculum, Assessment and Pedagogy Division (within the Government’s Education and Skills Department) to provide an audit/report on work completed and to propose a series of responses to the ‘Areas of Learning Experience’ (AoLE) teams who were writing the new curriculum guidance. The aim of the review was twofold: 1) to provide an audit/analysis of how the Wider Skills have been embedded in the work produced so far by the AoLE group; 2) to advise and suggest next steps for the AoLE groups as they continue their work. Subsequently, Penaluna led the development of the central ‘Skills Integral to the Four Purposes’, which is to be used by an estimated 28,000 Welsh teachers, and is currently leading the Innovation for Head Teachers programme as part an advisory role at Wales’ National Academy for Educational Leadership.