Sharing, learning and co-creating in international projects

The ENRICHER hubs Erasmus+ project nine universities learn and work together to create a common understanding of sustainable tourism and service design. The process brings together six universities from Georgia and Moldova with EU three partners from Finland, Austria and Italy representing the Ulysseys European University alliance. The capacity building has had important by-products: knowledge exchange, peer-to-peer learning, and co-creation.

We would like to share some of the key lessons learned during the project trainings and the Business Case Challenges, where teachers and students from the partner universities in Moldova and Georgia participated in design sprints to solve real business challenges from the local tourism industry. The sharing and learning process has been a genuine two-way dialogue. While the EU partners contributed more at the beginning, the universities from Georgia and Moldova are currently providing the insights for co-creation.

Knowledge exchange in trainings

The Training of Trainers -programme of the project was held in two parts: during the autumn of the first project year and the spring of the second project year. A total of 18 teachers and professors from the tourism and hospitality fields at the universities in Moldova and Georgia participated in the trainings focused on sustainable tourism and service design. Participants learned how to conduct design sprints and how to develop a sustainable business model for the hubs established at their universities using the Business Model Canvas.

The trainings were conducted by the EU partners, both in person in Kutaisi (Georgia) and Comrat (Moldova) as well as online over Zoom. All trainings were interactive, especially the one conducted in Moldova, where the participants took part in a design sprint. The participants of the sprint took a new role during the Business Case Challenges taking place in the autumn of the second year, as the original trainees became facilitators of the sprints with their students.

Local tourism companies provided the challenges, and each partner university selected their business challenges in cooperation with local tourism industry partners and networks. The challenges were delivered as a separate learning activity for students. Many universities integrated the challenges as the final step in their new sustainable tourism courses, which were developed based on insights from the Training of Trainers intensive weeks.

In Moldova and Georgia, all partner universities used the design sprint method. This choice was based on the teachers’ own practical experience with design sprints during the project trainings, allowing them to apply what they had learned. They also translated key training materials into the local languages to facilitate smooth collaboration with industry partners.

Peer learning from best practices

The winning student teams from each university in Moldova and Georgia presented their pitches to an international audience of EU trainers, the project manager, and fellow teachers and students from the partner universities. During the online session, all project partners had the opportunity to see what the others had been working on.

The students delivered innovative and creative solutions to real business challenges. They pitched their ideas clearly and confidently, demonstrating excellent English skills and strong preparation. All teams expressed their gratitude for the project and highlighted how valuable and engaging the learning experience had been. The pitches were recorded and are now available on the project website for inspiration.

After the winning pitches, the trainers from each target country university got together online to share what they had learnt from their sprints. One trainer from Georgia concluded that the business engangement enhanced learning outcomes:

Direct collaboration with tourism industry partners allowed students to work with an authentic tourism enterprise facing real constraints, such as seasonality, limited human resources, and dependence on domestic tourism flows. This engagement significantly increased students’ understanding of rural tourism realities, beyond what could be achieved through theoretical coursework alone.

Teachers acknowledged that sprint collaboration between universities and SMEs brings mutual benefits, but several challenges remain: finding willing entrepreneurs, clarifying the business challenges, and aligning expectations among students, teachers, and business owners.

Many teachers agreed that the design sprint methodology (Knapp, Zeratsky & Kowitz 2016; Stickdorn et al. 2018) is highly effective because it allows rapid problem definition, customer understanding, ideation, prototyping, and feedback collection within a short time frame. This approach promotes innovation, teamwork, problem-solving, and entrepreneurial skills while keeping students highly engaged. One Moldovan teacher noted, that sprints are very intensive, as teachers must keep students focused and ensure that tasks are completed on time.

Striking the right balance between teacher support and student autonomy is also essential, as students need space to develop their own ideas. Georgian teachers emphasised the importance of adjusting student schedules to allow full focus on the sprint and recommended early involvement of industry partners to ensure sufficient time and feedback. All participants need to understand that the goal of a design sprint is to explore and prototype ideas quickly, not to deliver perfect solutions.

Sharing experiences and best practices among teachers proved highly valuable. Peer-to-peer learning helps teachers adopt practical solutions from colleagues. Overall, it was encouraging to see the newly trained facilitators and students enthusiastically embrace the new methods and share lessons learned.

Co-creating outputs

Co-creation flourishes when psychological safety and a learning culture are both present (Grant 2021). As Amy Edmondson (2023) highlights, psychological safety forms the foundation of a learning culture, enabling teams to experiment, innovate, and learn together. This safety is built through a climate of respect and trust, where every partner feels empowered to be open, welcoming, and inclusive from the very start of the project.

With the Business Case Challenges now successfully completed, lessons freshly captured and shared among partners, the next step is to document the entire experience in a comprehensive manual. We are already developing into a ‘culture of learning’ (Kumpf & Jhunjhunwala 2023), where partners are encouraged and eager to contribute and share their insights. One of the places to do just that is going to be the last dissemination seminar in Chisinau in Moldova.

During the up-coming seminar week, partners will come together to finalise the contents of a manual on how to conduct business challenges. The aim is that anyone could facilitate a business challenge with the help of the manual that explains the exact phases and steps of a design sprint, and includs experiences from all partners. In the spirit of service design, customer feedback is in focus. The writing process will commence before the seminar, and all partners will contribute to its contents.

During the last year of the project, we have moved from knowledge exchange through peer learning to knowledge co-creation, where project partners create new knowledge and integrate it into new outputs (Kowshik, Chew & Lee 2025). What started from knowledge exchange and trainings has become peer learning and concrete acts of collaboration and co-creation.

Picture: Haaga-Helia