Abstract:

Following an initiative of the European Commission, DG Education and Culture and the OECD LEED Forum, and supported by a panel of six independent experts, related to entrepreneurship, education and local development, HEInnovate is an online guidance and self-assessment tool for Higher Education Institutions (HEI). HEInnovate is designed and developed as a tool to help HEI assess what they need to change or improve, in order to understand the new challenges they face as an entrepreneurial and innovative HEI, and comprises eight self-assessment areas. In this sense, HEI should develop the capacity to deal with complex social and economic issues, play a proactive role in the use of new knowledge for society and enterprises, assume an interactive role in cooperation and contribute to the sharing of knowledge with business and society in general. This paper aims to use HEInnovate as a self-assessment tool for HEI that wish to exploit their entrepreneurial and innovative potential, namely in the dimension of “Entrepreneurship Development in Teaching and Learning”, and to analyse the Guarda Polytechnic Institute (GPI) as an Institution, in a global perspective, or in a segmented way, to its four Organic Units and eleven Technical-Scientific Units. Although it is still a study in implementation, it is intended to demonstrate the importance of its application for the creation of an entrepreneurial culture and innovation in the case presented, both internally and externally.

Keywords:

Higher Education Institutions, Entrepreneurship Education, HEInnovate.