"Context: INTENSE – INTernational ENtrepreneurship Skills Europe is a transnational project of five European Higher Education Institutions (HEI). INTENSE responds to the needs for internationalisation of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME), the needs of students to gain international, entrepreneurial, and innovation competences and HEIs’ needs to stimulate these competencies by creating a holistic and joint teaching approach. The project was funded by the EU programme Erasmus+ from September 2016 to September 2019.Objectives: INTENSE promotes the internationalisation, entrepreneurial, and innovation skills of students, HEI staff, and European SMEs and established a network between these stakeholders. It established an innovative and complex teaching module, which stimulates entrepreneurial behaviour and the internationalisation of students, HEI staff, and SMEs. This contributes to the employability of students and HEI staff.Participating organisations:INTENSE was implemented by five HEIs (Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin (HTW), Germany; Hogeschool Utrecht, the Netherlands; University Colleges Leuven-Limburg, Belgium; Turku University of Applied Sciences, Finland; J. Strossmayer University of Osijek, Croatia). The consortium is a mix of universities and universities of applied sciences with different backgrounds. All partners set up national steering structures with students, SMEs, and other relevant stakeholders. During the project, five additional HEIs joined the team and started to implement the INTENSE teaching approach.Main activities:INTENSE developed an interactive and transnational teaching module on SME internationalisation. This 15 ECTS teaching module includes material on international entrepreneurship, SME internationalisation, project management, and practical skills; additional teaching material of 5 ECTS was also created.Several rounds of the transnational student consultancy project, in which student teams act as real entrepreneurs supporting the SMEs’ internationalisation, were conducted. Student teams do not just consult their local SME, but also cooperate with student teams in the target market of the SME and gain insight into several SME projects while broadening their international competences and network.Furthermore, a toolkit was developed prioritising the entrepreneur’s perspective to support its quest to internationalise. INTENSE also re-developed and tested an instrument to measure innovation competences among students, entrepreneurs, and HEI staff members, and developed policy recommendations.Results and impact:More than 950 students benefitted from the INTENSE teaching material and were trained in analysing the internationalisation potential of SMEs in the last 1,5 years of the project. 290 students worked on real-life SME cases and developed individual situation analyses for the SMEs during transnational student consultancy projects. These students cooperated transnationally to solve their SMEs’ challenge and presented their work at multiplier events to potential future employers. Several students per country were offered a job from participating SMEs.The INTENSE teaching material is openly available on the INTENSE platform. Staff from participating HEIs were trained in this new learning module and in the innovation measurement instrument, in total 44 HEI staff benefited from international experiences during the project. A teaching manual plus a module description ensures the transferability of the project outputs to additional HEIs. Awareness for this module was raised by international multiplier events and by publications in relevant journals.Besides the tailor-made support that 49 SMEs received during the transnational student consultancy, INTENSE gathered relevant information on internationalisation on the SME toolkit, openly available to all SMEs. INTENSE lessons learned and recommendations on how to stimulate the internationalisation of SMEs, modernisation of HEIs, and employability of students was elaborated in a public conference with relevant stakeholders.Longer-term benefits:INTENSE contributes to the reforms of the 2011 EU Modernisation Agenda. It improves the quality and relevance of teaching & learning (KP2) of the participating and further joining HEIs. The fact that five additional HEIs already implemented the teaching approach emphasizes the quality and relevance of the teaching approach. Due to the design of the transnational student consultancy, INTENSE promotes the mobility of students & staff (KP3), extending beyond the funding period, and strengthens the “knowledge triangle"" of education, research, and innovation (KP4) through the close cooperation in the steering group.INTENSE supports the implementation of the 2013 Communication on Opening Up Education, as all teaching material is openly available.INTENSE increases the employability of students and HEI staff, through the acquired entrepreneurial and transversal competences."