The Center of Technology Transfer & Development is an active participant the last years at the implementation of Unistep and Unistep+ initiatives.

UNISTEP focuses on creating a positive environment for cultivating entrepreneurship among University students and researchers. Greek students get good and sound education in many scientific and engineering principles, however the entrepreneurship culture is at its infancy. With the aid of appropriately structured and targeted educational seminars and the implementation of the Nursery of Ideas the project aims at cultivating the entrepreneurship culture to Greek students and researchers of Higher Educational Institutes and Research Centres in Crete.

The action aims at promoting the creativity and entrepreneurship of students and researchers in the Institutions of Crete while exploiting knowledge of academic personnel and research infrastructure of the four Institutions, Technical University of Crete, University of Crete, Foundation of Research and Technology Hellas-Science and Technology Park of Crete and Technological Institute of Crete. This action involves the creation of an appropriate lab type environment where groups of students or post–graduate students can work for creating, developing and testing a prototype based on their idea, and which could be the basis for development of a new product or service leading to a new technology based enterprise. The four Institutions provide access to the use of large and expensive laboratory equipment, under
the supervision and direction of academic personnel, necessary for the successful development and testing of the prototypes.

The supporting environment provides for appropriate training of the students participating in the Nursery of Ideas, helping them in their effort to become successful entrepreneurs. Four training modules are given, Introduction to Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur and the Legal Environment, Developing a Business Plan and Financing of a New Venture. In addition, a network of Mentors from successful entrepreneurs is established, who can guide and support the students during the development of their prototype and finally help them develop their business plans to seek additional funding and to establish start-up companies. Links to appropriate infrastructures such as Incubators and Science and Technology Parks are also provided for potential set-up of start-up companies. The full support of the innovative environment of the Science and Technology Park is fully exploited as a support to University students.

UNISTEP was implemented with the support of Innovative Actions program CRINNO of the Region of Crete and of Regional Innovation Pole of Crete (EPAN) in two phases. In the first phase the project supported twenty teams of students to develop twenty prototypes in fields of research of the Institutes over a period of twenty four months (2003-2005) for a budget of 400.000 euros. Also 80 students were trained during the period of implementation. Final results are two new start-up companies which have already been established in STEP-C, one prototype was undergoing full scale testing leading to a company (financed through The Regional Innovation Pole of Crete -i4Crete) and one prototype resulted in a consortium creation, implementing a cooperative development project which is currently implemented through the Regional Innovation Pole of Crete (www.i4crete.gr).

The second phase (UNISTEP+) aimed at developing 15 prototypes and training of 80 students, with a budget of 268.000 € and was being implemented over the period of 2007-2009.

The Bielefield pre-incubation (pdf)