European institutions have always considered the development of entrepreneurial capacity a pillar of the development of European Union, both for the citizens of all ages and organizations called to generate economic activities for the market. In the last two decades, the discussion has been focused on being entrepreneurial or becoming entrepreneurial, having a business or having an entrepreneurial attitude in every aspects and events of life.

It was 2006 when the EU Parliament published a recommendation defining the eight Key Competences for Lifelong learning, with “Sense of initiative and Entrepreneurship” as the seventh among them. Entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial learning have remained high on the agenda of EC by being mentioned in a number of other policy papers, from the Small Business Act for Europe to the New Skills Agenda for Europe.

Ten years later, inspired by a number of pilot initiatives and studies, the partnership between the Joint Research Center (JRC) and DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion produced the EntreComp framework, a common reference for initiatives dealing with entrepreneurial learning.

JRC researchers and EC officers worked to find the elements defining entrepreneurship as a transversal competence to be developed in a life-long learning perspective.

It was a revolution! For the first time, the focus on the development of competences, through the creation of entrepreneurial value, was opening the field of potential application of entrepreneurial practices in education, work and in citizens’ participation and active engagement in the society.

EntreComp was born to be a common reference to formal, non-formal and informal learning contexts, working well in HEIs or VET initiatives, with students and people of all ages and condition in the society.

The framework is organized with 3 competences area (Ideas and Opportunities, Resources and Into Action), each with 5 competences. 8 progressions levels from foundation to intermediate, advanced and expert level built around the entrepreneurial value created with support of others or through gaining autonomy and becoming able to transform ideas into actions, up until becoming part of those able to generate impact through entrepreneurial value in a give domain.

Today the framework born in 2016 has been applied and used by practitioners in a number of initiatives, with different targets, educational levels and economic sectors, making EntreComp a tool more and more applied into practice.

But for this and other stories on EntreComp you should wait our next blog post …