On 30 November and 1 December 2022, the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development of the European Commission (DG AGRI) and the Support Facility for Innovation and Knowledge exchange including EIP-AGRI held the one-and-a-half-day EU CAP Network workshop ‘Young entrepreneurs – Engines of innovation in rural areas.

With a total of 76 registrations, the workshop participants represented 19 different Member States from which they brought their own experience and knowledge on rural innovation and entre- preneurship. The workshop participants came from a wide range of different backgrounds, including young entrepreneurs, farmers, fo- resters, researchers and students, advisors, civil servants, innovation support agents / innovation brokers, and land owners.

The main aim of the workshop was to support young entrepreneurship, innovation ecosystems and those involved in them in rural areas by showcasing good practices from EIP-AGRI Operational Groups, Horizon projects and projects from other EU-funding programmes, leadership figures from local communities, and other examples of leadership and innovators that have moved into rural communities. The core methodology of the workshop was centred around four interactive participatory sessions that focused on innovations from ideation to scaling and replication.