EIT Food Inspire Programme

The Inspire Programme will raise awareness on global food challenges and provide trainings on the latest innovations in Food & Agriculture.

Entrepreneurial capacity and business creation skills will be taught like design thinking, business idea development, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, team building, market and risk analysis. The programme will offer 5 different individual courses: Digitalization for Circular Food Systems - Digit4Circularity, Protein for Future, Sustainable Aquaculture, Sustainable Food Packaging – REPAK, and Targeted Nutrition. 

Choose one of the 5 topics of your interest, each of the 5 courses have different start dates:

• Digitalization for Circular Food Systems - Digit4Circularity: In this autumn school, the topic will be formed around establishing solutions that allow to open up new paths in the food value chains and thus to allow for a better valorization and more efficient use of resources. For more information click here.
• Protein for Future: A course for sustainable, climate friendly alternative protein solutions. To find out more click here.
• Sustainable Aquaculture: The aim of this autumn school is to provide an overview of aquaculture production in Europe, showcase the worldwide opportunities, outline the current barriers and facilitators to production, and encourage talented recruits and aspiring entrepreneurs into the sector and to create innovative solutions to address the challenges to production. Click here for more information.
• Sustainable Food Packaging – REPAK: The purpose of the autumn school is to analyse the latest developments in sustainable food packaging, appraise the efficacy of existing emerging technologies, and train talent with a more holistic approach to food packaging business entrepreneurship. Find out more here.
• Targeted Nutrition: This course will take a targeted approach to developing healthy innovative food products for consumers with specific nutritional and consumer needs, these could include infants, children, adolescents, or older adults. Learn more here.

By bundling higher education, research and businesses across Europe, the Inspire Programme is catalysing innovation and accelerating entrepreneurship to deliver solutions to the grand societal challenges. Coupling together education, research and businesses fosters dynamic and systemic interaction between different actors in the food system and students and establishes close-knit relationships. Such interaction forges the knowledge triangle and offers students an opportunity to learn from industry experts and startups active in the agri-food sector. This novel approach taps into investment in education and skills, thereby generating state of mind of young generations who dare to think out side of the box and empowers talents already active on the job market.

Inspire Programme Structure

The Inspire Programme consists of five different individual thematic courses focusing on key innovation areas of food & agriculture. In addition to specific thematic trainings related to the content of the individual course, trainings with a focus on entrepreneurship will also be provided. The latter will be delivered by following EIT Food partners: University of Cambridge, University of Aarhus, Technion, and Technical University of Munich.
With such thoroughly designed structure, the programme fosters the entrepreneurial growth of talented individuals and boosts key competences such as leadership, critical thinking, problem solving, business skills and communication affinity.

The programme aims to develop a new generation of entrepreneurs, specialists and innovators, which will be equipped to shape a new kind of food system that is innovative, resilient, and sustainable.

Online Learning

• Introduction to the challenges of the food system with a focus on course specific topic
• Knowledge & skills on how to launch a business

Interactive learning & Hands-on work

Generate business ideas in food space & work on viable solutions, to turn food and agriculture into a sustainable, healthy and trusted sytem for all.

1. Leading academic and industry partners of EIT Food will contribute with important insights and mentoring.
2. Receive seminars, workshops, professional guidance, networking events and more.
3. Immersion into key innovation ecosystem in Europe.
4. Final pitch competition to select Inspire winners 2021.

Eligibility

Students, entrepreneurs, researchers, and professionals interested in creating a business idea around our food system's most significant issues.

Check out the fees

Registration are now open!