11 February, 2019

On Tuesday 9th April 2019, from 9:30am to 1:30pm, Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence will take part in a Lifelong Learning Festival event, ‘SmARtEST: Entrepreneurial Skills Training for over 65s'. This event is FREE and will be hosted in the Rubicon Business Incubator Centre, on CIT's Bishopstown Campus.

The event forms part of preliminary research for a CIT PhD programme, called SmARtEST. The acronym SmARtEST stands for Smart Ageing and Renewal through Entrepreneurial Skills Training. The project aims to investigate the benefits and barriers to being entrepreneurial in later life stages.

The event provides a taster programme for older participants to explore their own personal skillset and life experience and relate these to entrepreneurial skills, at a time when they are considering retirement or are already retired.

The day will begin with an introduction to older entrepreneurship. Then, a senior entrepreneur will speak about their entrepreneurial journey at ‘retirement’ age. An entrepreneurial exercise will follow where participants get a chance to do an entrepreneurial challenge. The CIT enterprise intern will conduct a tour of the Incubator facilities outlining the variety of businesses resident in the incubator. The Rubicon manager will explain how the Rubicon offers guidance from idea stage to market entry and use their vast experience in supporting entrepreneurs.

This event is FREE and tickets are available on Eventbrite at https://hinckscentreentrepreneurshipexcellence.eventbrite.ie

The SmARtEST Programme is funded by Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland, under the Rísam Scholarship PhD programme. It aims to continue the work started by the European Commission funded Erasmus+ MyBusiness project. The MyBusiness project produced a specially designed entrepreneurial skills training programme for persons over 50 years of age and it was piloted successfully in three European countries, including Ireland. This follow-on project will explore entrepreneurial skills training needs for persons over 65 years of age. This is an understudied, underserved group which is increasing in demographic significance. Inclusive entrepreneurship seeks to ensure that all people, regardless of their characteristics and socio-economic background, have an equal opportunity to start and manage their own business (OECD/European Commission, 2013). Broader definitions of entrepreneurship as ‘creating value for others’ and entrepreneurship education as practice of entrepreneurial methods mean that entrepreneurial skills training can be relevant outside of the narrow definitions of starting a business and mean that an appropriate entrepreneurial skills training programme may be beneficial at a lifetime transition stage, such as, retirement.

For further information, or if you have any queries call us at 021 432 6111 or 021 432 6204 or email us at hincks@cit.ie