Partners

SULSIT social mission is to prepare highly qualified, socially responsible personally motivated and adaptive to the labour market specialists. The University has the strategic aim for sustainable development as a leading higher school with a significant scientific, technological and innovative potential. SULSIT has the ambition to continue the implementation of the so called Third Mission of the universities – to work on projects with national and regional significance.

SULSIT has gained educational, scientific, technological and innovation capacity, able to get actively involved in the European Research and Innovation Area by implementing projects under Horizon 2020, Erasmus+ and TEMPUS Programmes, as well as in other international projects, and initiatiives e.g. those financed by UNESCO and World bank funds. SULSIT has partnerships with many European research and educational centres and high technological companies especially in the field of Internet technologies, education technologies, etc. SULSIT is member of the Balkan Universities Network.

The "Knowledge, Innovation and Strategies Management Club" (KISMC) is a Bulgarian NGO established established in 2012 by experienced consultants and adults' trainers united by the primary purpose to stimulate the transfer and use of contemporary methodologies and tools in the Bulgarian enterprises for better management efficiency and labour force skills. The main objective of the NGO is to promote the transfer and use of modern methods and tools for knowledge, innovation and strategies management in companies and organisations in Bulgaria in order to achieve higher efficiency of governance in the country and improve the competitive position of individual businesses and organisations.

Driven by the club founders' experience in management consulting, business development, innovation management and entrepreneurship as well as years of profound observations of the market environment and global changes the Knowledge, Innovation and Strategies Management Club has been established as a non-profit organisation to help businesses survive during difficult times and changes through:

• gaining competitive advantage over fierce competitors;
• ​realising innovative modern tools to optimise their intellectual potential;
• ​focusing on their strategy.

ANFI sas is a consulting and business development company. In addition to venturing in projects related to hospitality, green technologies and ICT, ANFI represents the IXL-Center in the Italian market. The Center for Innovation, Excellence and Leadership (IXL Center) is focused on delivering breakthrough and high performance results, building lasting innovation capabilities, and researching and codifying best practices in innovation management. With over 30 years experience ANFI and IXL develop innovative business solutions and capabilities of leaders, teams and organizations. We help organizations get started with powerful audits and learning histories, and we work across the entire spectrum from sourcing and idea generation, through concept development and pressure testing, to accelerated pilots, launch and scale-up. Together we drive accelerated execution through our Innovation Accelerator, and our experienced consulting support and action coaching of Eureka, Pursuit and Realization Teams programs developed for the different target groups and needs.

As vocational training institution, ANFI develops and provides training in innovation and entrepreneurship to about 2000 Master students in different universities around the world in partnership with IXL Center and other partners around the world. ANFI started developing a model for trainings based on team competition in order to solve company challenges. This model represents a win-win for all parties involved:

• For the school: they increase attractiveness for students and improve their rankings.
• For students: students having the opportunity to apply what they learned.

ANFI can bring all the experience and wide network fo partners that are necessary for developing project outputs and disseminating the final results. Anfi can also bring experience in teaching innovation ("how to get it right and how to make it real"). Massimo Andriolo as founder and CEO of ANFI and Principal of IXL Italy will be responsible for the project. He brings over 15 years experience in finance, entrepreneurship and innovation education.

FUNDACION TECNALIA RESEARCH & INNOVATION (TECNALIA) is a private, non-profit and independent research organisation resulting from the merger of eight research organisations. TECNALIA is the first applied research centre in Spain and one of the most important in Europe with around 1.500 staff, 110 million Euro turnover and over 4.000 clients. Innovation Systems, Sustainable Development (Energy, Construction and Environment), Industry and Transport (Casting and iron & steel, Transport and Industrial Systems), ICT (Software, Telecom, Infotech and Information Society) and Health and Life Quality (Health and Life Quality) are the fields in which TECNALIA operates. The focus of TECNALIA activities is the applied research on innovative technologies, in order to use the knowledge and research results in the companies and in the society to contribute to their growth. Tecnalia´s role in the ApInno project can be summarized as follows:

• Cross-country needs analysis: Tecnalia will reach out to business companies and Universities in Spain
• Testing of the training materials:
• Tecnalia will select researchers to be trained
• Tecnalia will collect partners´ and stakeholders´ feedback and inputs in order to develop the "benchmark" model for the Guide for collaboration
• Assessment of the created partnership model and generation of indicators for "successful" collaboration.
• Publishing a guide for business-academia collaboration which will serve as a best practice.

JODA Training is a family operated Management & Personal Development Training Provider, developing clients across both the UK and internationally ( Croatia, Jordan, Jakarta, Romania, Bulgaria) since 1993. With over 2 decades of operational experience, our fundamental focus is on the development of our clients - team leaders, managers and workforce though a very comprehensive range of bespoke 'need-specific' training interventions and vocational courses such as Stress Awareness, Customer Service, Professional Relationship Building and Creativity and Innovation.

Through our team of experienced associates, we offer management and leadership programmes accredited through the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM). We are also able to offer a range of other internationally recognised professional qualifications such as HSE, IOSH & NEBOSH, Project Management, Sales and Marketing, Purchasing, Supply and Logistics.