Join our Spotlight & Catalyst courses: Fostering innovation through professional education

News 24 May 2017

Join Climate KIC’s new Spotlight and Catalyst courses , our new professional education training courses for 2017.

Connecting professionals from around Europe, the Spotlight and Catalyst courses strengthen competencies to develop  climate-friendly innovations. The courses tackle innovations from a variety of sectors.

Spotlight

The Spotlight courses are short and comprehensive educational programme. The courses will showcase some best practice examples, but are also designed to inspire you and think outside the box and create new climate friendly innovative solutions.Spotlight courses are between 1-3 days in length.

Catalyst

The Catalyst courses bring together professionals and entrepreneurs facing similar challenges for sharing and transfer of best practice to enhance their projects, strategies and skills on managing innovation. The residential workshop is accompanied by online modules. Participants work intensively and in a trans disciplinary setting on specific “bring your own cases”.

Upcoming Spotlight courses

Impact Players – Gamification for a greener city

Budapest, Hungary, 15 – 16 June 2017

Gamification is about applying game elements and (digital) game design techniques to non-game problems, such as the challenges climate issues pose to business and the related social impacts.

Gamification is the hot new business concept being used by the world’s leading companies (Nike, Siemens, Dell, eBay, Cisco, etc.) Games are powerful tools and can engage users on a higher level.

The workshop is designed to give you a deeper insight into gamification and co-creation processes. Participants will have the opportunity to learn how to use games and co-creation effectively in their field of work, reach and engage their target audience, and through the change in civic behavior patterns achieve their objectives.

Copernicus: from geospatial to agribusiness

Bologna, Italy, 16 June 2017

An intensive one-day course that aims to promote awareness and knowledge of Copernicus services and geospatial data products with environmental data modeling and geocomputation.

Copernicus is a EU Programme aimed at developing free and open information services based on satellite and non-space data to help service providers, public authorities and other international organizations.

By sharing real case studies and using Web tools, participants can develop successful sustainable business practices to explore sustainable agricultural challenges, using Earth observation data from Sentinel satellites and Copernicus services.

The course is preceded by an introductory webinar helping to familiarize participants with key Copernicus concepts.

Advanced business models for climate friendly technologies and innovation

Valencia, Spain, 13 – 14 July 2017

This short course will introduce participants to three essential elements of a successful project: firstly identifying the climate-change and other benefits of technological innovations; secondly evaluating the economic and financial feasibility of a proposed project; and finally identifying stakeholders and options for project financing. Entrepreneurs in climate-friendly technologies must understand new agents in the financial markets, such as investment funds and private equity companies and how they differ from traditional sources of finance.

Apply now!

Interested in applying for a Spotlight or Catalyst course? Fees for the spotlight course are EUR 400-800 (depending on the number of days). A 50% discount on the regular fee is available for employees of public institutions, Climate-KIC partners, NGOs and Climate-KIC alumni.

Participants from our EIT Regional Innovation Scheme (EIT RIS) countries (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia) can apply for a stipend for the course fees.

For further news and inquiries: dorit.lehr@community.climate-kic.org

Courses start too early for you? Here are further courses to come in 2017

Spotlight courses

  • Accessing new low carbon energy markets

Birmingham, Great Britain, 9 – 10 October 2017

  • Greening your business. Embedding sustainability into business model innovation

Bologna, Italy, 18 – 20 October 2017

  • Copernicus: from geospatial to smart cities

Bologna, Italy, 26 October 2017

  • Biomimicry thinking for blue green infrastructure

Limassol, Cyprus, 13 – 15 October 2017

Catalyst Courses

  • Professional skills for the transition to a circular economy. A systematic approach to water management.

Valencia, Spain, 16 – 21 October 2017

  • Sustainable innovation in agrofood industry

Budapest, Hungary, 27 November – 2 December 2017

  • Sustainable City – responsible leadership

Wroclaw, Poland, 20 – 25 November 2017

Check out the Professional Education website for up to date information!