NomadTrail

Innovation, disruption and digital transformation are transformative patterns which go hand-in-hand. They cause a change process which is characterized by a tremendous pace and a high level of uncertainty. In order to cope with disruptive elements and jump innovations, projects have proven to be a good tool and a major organisational pattern. Innovations are driven by projects and start-ups are emerging from such projects. An agile and entrepreneurial mindset develops in projects. Another relevant aspect are the international, intercultural and interdisciplinary competencies that are indispensable in a project. Innovation happens in global, cosmopolitan communities, requiring communication competences. The goal of the project “Virtual Projects for European Digital Natives (NomadTrail)” is to prepare students for this international, digitalized and projectized working environment by developing their project competence, their international communication competence and their entrepreneurial mindset. They are digital natives and they become digital nomads in their work life, working from anywhere at any time, making their career a nomad trail with respective required competences.

EU countries form a knowledge driven economy and students’ prospective jobs are increasingly generated in international companies, even start-ups (e.g. in the IT sector) do international projects right from the start. This requires the competences for working in international, cross-border innovation projects, using agile methods. NomadTrail will serve these needs by building a virtual, cross-country and cross-university community with 4 main outcomes:

• A Digital Framework for Virtual Cross-Border Projects
• An Innovation Projects Programme with 3 transdisciplinary students' project formats with business 
• A Train-the-Trainer programme for teachers
• The annual Summer School on Innovation Projects

NomadTrail is also an inclusive concept for students with fewer opportunities, especially people in remote and rural areas, people with disabilities or financial and family constraints and people who cannot easily travel. An advantage is that it is easy to multiply it to other HEIs. The project obviously makes sense only in an international setup. It requires a project consortium where a certain cooperation and alignment of educational programmes already happened. A combination of partner competences in the fields of digital transformation, project management, innovation & entrepreneurship and university-industry cooperation is needed with access to innovation ecosystems. This is delivered by the European Partnership for Project and Innovation Management (EuroPIM) which forms the core of the consortium.