The British Council in partnership with iNNpulsa, is launching a project which consists of an exchange of good practices, learning about entrepreneurship, innovation and incubation programmes between Colombian and UK universities.

The main objective of this exchange is to strengthen the programmes/incubation models of Colombian universities participating in Entrepreneurship Campus – C Emprende - which aims to increase the success rate of the start-ups emerging from this initiative. The exchange with the UK universities will strengthen the Colombian programmes with models known for the quality of incubation in high impact entrepreneurships. Colombian universities must apply their learning from their UK visit to their own models in order to improve and strengthen their programmes and to improve the success indicators in the process of accompanying the start-ups. Additionally, a call will be opened in order to grant seed capital funding for Colombian universities to invest in their projects and strengthen strategic alliances with UK universities.

Main project activities

1. Pre-departure workshop: in preparation for an inbound mission, we will be gathering the selected Colombian universities to participate in a practical workshop to learn more about the UK entrepreneurship ecosystem and to begin the review process of the incubation/entrepreneurship models they will be working with for the duration of the project.

2. Inbound UK mission: the Colombian universities which took part in the pre-departure workshop will then visit UK universities, and innovation and entrepreneurship institutions in October 2019. The delegation will be accompanied by British Council and iNNpulsa staff. The universities sending in their expressions of interest as part of this call will be eligible to host a session during the mission. More information on this will be provided once the initial expression of interest call is reviewed.

3. Call for applications – UK-Colombia partnerships: following the mission, UK and Colombian universities can participate to obtain seed-funding to work on improving incubation models and collaborate on joint initiatives/entrepreneurship programmes. Further information on this call will be available later in the year.

About C Emprende

iNNpulsa Colombia is the Business Growth Management Unit of the Colombian National Government. Created in February 2012, the organisation promotes entrepreneurship, innovation and productivity as drivers for business development and competitiveness in Colombia.

iNNpulsa has been working on the implementation of an Entrepreneurship Campus, which aims to connect the main actors in the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem in the same place. This allows them to work together to increase the number of high impact start-ups and improve the success rate of the promoted entrepreneurships. In this sense, universities, accelerators, private companies, venture capitalists, multilateral organizations, service providers and the government, all work together with a common purpose: to generate and consolidate high-quality start-ups, with a vision to include the whole of Latin America.

In the first phase, the main Campus will be set up in Bogotá, and consequently replicated in five main regions of the country; Valle and the Pacific region, Antioquia, the Caribbean region, Santander and the Coffee Axis. One of the main pillars of the Campus is to have incubation and acceleration programmes of the highest quality. To achieve this purpose, we identified the opportunity to bring closer Colombian universities to UK universities that have already developed these incubation programmes with successful results. Considering that the United Kingdom has currently one of the strongest entrepreneurship ecosystems in Europe, it is a strategic ally for this initiative.