Specific needs of the target groups:

• highly skilled workforce is necessary - While 35% of all jobs in the EU will require high-level qualifications by 2020, only 26% of the workforce currently has a higher education qualification. (ENTREPRENEURSHIP 2020 ACTION PLAN, COM(2012) 795 final)
• defined entrepreneurial and innovative learning outcomes for all educators are needed, to introduce practical experiential learning models and experience of real world.
• the majority of SMEs will never become the next Google, Facebook or Skype. Thus innovations in low-tech industries need to be further developed and their capabilities - enhanced.

The APInno proposal aims to modernize the current HEIs educational approach to face up to the current and future challenges. It will better integrate entrepreneurship and innovation activities in the established curriculum as a horizontal element in deferent fields of study (ICT, engineering, business, etc.) and as a subject in its own right (innovation management skills). It transforms entrepreneurship education from being an extra-curricular ‘add-on’ to an integral part of the curriculum.

The greater use of experiential learning and a new coach/mentor role for teachers will help students to become more independent and to take the initiative in the future. The additional involvement of managers from real business being students' clients puts them in a low-risk real business environments with real boundaries, constraints and expectations as it is in the real world.

In this sense it will act as a pilot project in testing a new form of delivering innovation education, with the goal to disseminate resulting good practices widely, and to encourage take up of the tested methods by larger number of HEIs.