“With the help of the UNIcorn project, the participating universities will strengthen cooperation with companies and improve entrepreneurship studies,” said Sven Illing, TalTech’s Vice-Rector for Entrepreneurship.

The project has four primary directions:

• developing the process of knowledge and technology transfer and the required competences
• developing entrepreneurship studies in order to support entrepreneurship and innovation
• strengthening the university’s partnerships and networks by means of the entrepreneurial ecosystem
• improving the system of measuring the impact of business cooperation

During the project, we will describe the activities of the knowledge and technology transfer process and the required competences. Furthermore, we will develop a new entrepreneurship studies module, create new connections with both the EIT and its external partners (including companies, investors and other universities) as well as develop metrics and a system to measure how the business cooperation impacts the university and society.

The activities of the first stage of the project last from July to December 2021, where a consortium of six partners have to meet specific benchmarks, which will be used to assess whether the project will receive 800,000 euros in the second stage, which runs from January 2022 to July 2023.

The project ‘Fostering Knowledge Transfer from University to Business – Innovation to Unicorn’ (abbreviated as UNIcorn) is led by the Tallinn University of Technology with the University of Tartu,Tallinn University, the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (Latvia), Vilnius University (Lithuania) and the Research and Technological Development Centre Tecnalia (Spain) as partners.