SME ENGAGEMENT SUB-CLUSTER
OVERVIEW
The SME Engagement Subcluster brings together Advanced Digital Skills projects to tackle a shared challenge: how to strengthen the participation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in educational and training activities. It addresses two complementary dimensions of engagement, helping projects attract external SMEs into training, certification, upskilling and reskilling opportunities, and supporting SMEs already within project consortia to play a more active role in designing and delivering education. Through collaborative exchange, the subcluster will surface common barriers, share proven practices and produce practical guidance that projects across the ecosystem can reuse.
JOIN OUR KICKOFF MEETING
20 October 2026 | 12:00 CEST
SCOPE
The subcluster’s work spans two connected tracks.
- The first looks outward, at how projects can more effectively reach external SMEs and draw them into training programmes, specialised courses, certification schemes, micro-credentials, workshops and mentoring activities. This includes examining the barriers that keep SMEs from engaging, limited awareness, time and resource constraints, difficulty identifying relevant opportunities, unclear business value, or training formats that lack flexibility.
- The second track looks inward, at SMEs that are already consortium partners. While these companies typically bring strong technological, sectoral and practical expertise, they may have limited experience with formal teaching or training roles. The subcluster will explore how these SME professionals can build the competencies and access the support mechanisms needed to contribute meaningfully to teaching, mentoring, supervision, assessment and curriculum design.
CHAIRS
Professor at University of the Aegean and Member of the Board of Hellenic Data Protection Authority
WHY PARTICIPATE?
Mapping current practices and challenges
Projects gain a structured way to compare their experience with SME engagement against peers facing similar challenges, moving beyond isolated trial-and-error towards a shared, evidence-based starting point.
Identifying and analysing common challenges
By pooling input across projects, participants help pinpoint which barriers to SME participation are truly systemic versus project-specific, ensuring that later solutions target the issues that matter most across the ecosystem.
Developing and exchanging solutions and good practices
Participation gives projects early access to practices already tested elsewhere, flexible learning formats, targeted SME communication, train-the-trainer models and joint academic–industry teaching arrangements, reducing the need to develop these approaches from scratch.
Consolidating recommendations and outputs
Projects that take part shape the final guidance and recommendations directly, ensuring the reusable tools, frameworks and best-practice collections reflect their own operational realities and can be applied immediately within their consortia.
PLANNED ACTIVITIES
The subcluster follows a collaborative, practice-oriented approach organised into four phases over approximately nine months.
Phase 1 – Mapping current practices and challenges (months 1–2).
Participating projects share their experience engaging external SMEs and the educational roles played by consortium SMEs, using a common template to build a consolidated, comparable picture of current practices and challenges.
Phase 2 – Identifying and analysing common challenges (months 3–4).
The subcluster analyses this input to pinpoint recurring obstacles, from limited SME awareness and outreach constraints to gaps in teaching or supervision experience among consortium SME staff, and prioritises where joint action can add the most value.
Phase 3 – Developing and exchanging solutions and good practices (months 5–7).
Projects share what has worked in attracting and retaining SMEs, including flexible learning formats, targeted communication and cooperation with business associations. In parallel, the subcluster explores train-the-trainer models, basic pedagogical guidance, joint academic–industry teaching arrangements and practical templates to help SME professionals contribute effectively without becoming full-time educators.
Phase 4 – Consolidating recommendations and outputs (months 8–9).
The subcluster brings the work together into reusable outputs, including a summary of key barriers, a collection of effective SME engagement practices, and recommendations for both attracting external SMEs and enabling consortium SMEs to contribute more fully to teaching, training, mentoring and supervision.