MUSE - safe and sound approach to citizens to get collectively entrepreneurship and start-up experience & skills

The goal of the project is to increase the number of people (in working life or in the joint phase with studies) with entrepreneurship/start-up experience. This growing group of people with an entrepreneurial mindset opens up new opportunities for current start-up operators. Simultaneously, this increases entrepreneurial spirit in society across the board. Together, these produce more resilience for the entire society. The goal is reached by modifying the current requirements of the start-up scene broadly to address it for a more diverse target group. We are increasing the number of entrepreneurs with measures the range and richness of experiences of the participants. Muusa offers new variations on what kind people and which content they use to acquire a start-up experience for themselves and how this experience continues in their everyday life - with individuals and formed teams.

New know-how, a new approach and a sense of community are needed in working life now more than ever. The communication of regional start-up communities and services tells about happy participants, a relaxed atmosphere, new knowledge and skills, and the progress of entrepreneurship and ideas with wonderful new people. But the recognized problem is that traditional start-up activities meet the diverse needs of competent and thinking citizens
in working life very narrowly. Start-up service offerings are too few and one-sided. They can only take a limited number of participants and they often appeal mostly to traditionally technical-business-oriented people. Often, the majority of participants are men. Working life needs a large number of people with start-up experience, encouraged, confident and better at entrepreneurship. Favorable conditions must be created for cooperation, trust is the key (Blomqvist, 2023, Työyhteisön pieni kirja luottamuksesta, TYÖ2030). Not everyone starts their own business. But strengthening know-how, trust, community and two provincial networks related to your own idea and your own first "team" are important capital for working-age people who need start-up experience. They bring new energy, self-confidence and better employability, regardless of labor market status. The start-up experience gives courage and
humility. It operationalizes the curiosity and criticism of one's own ideas with the help of the reliable community of MUUSA. MUUSA creates a new kind of spiritual framework for more and more working citizens to get a start-up-like experience. We need more entrepreneurs and suitably brave entrepreneurial skills to support working life and new entrepreneurial activities. The MUUSA pilots implemented in two provinces offer the participants a different start-up
experience, so that working life, which is in transition, is really on a sustainable basis. MUUSA takes a stand, MUUSA listens. The new, growing experiential start-up community with an entrepreneurial spirit, the MUUSA community, will have a safe path to move forward as itself, with its ideas and thoughts. In the MUUSA pilots, all kinds of people, characters, and emotions are sought as inspiring mentors AND curious participants, which are considered valuable for the development of the participant's skills. Defining and recruiting MUUSA mentors is an important
part of the project. In addition to the other characteristics we define, half of the mentors are men
and half are women.

A large number of participants are motivated to engage in entrepreneurship and business idea development activities. This group is given start-up and entrepreneurial thinking and business idea experiences, which a muse suitable for their emotional and value world raises to a new level of experience, fairly and ethically. The project's 20 muses first inspire their own small group. Inspired by the musicians and ideas of the group, the group chooses case-specific forms of action and teamwork is born. The groups meet regionally and team building continues. Finally,
regional groups are brought together with groups from two provinces, in which case the next level of activity is seen and experienced as participants meet more of their kind. A muse mentor must be defined here as an enthusiast, a visionary and an experiencer who speaks to different groups of participants, whom the participants choose for themselves. The background idea of the definition is the 9 muses of ancient Greece, who represent various objects and forms of enthusiasm and love, from poetry to science. A muse is, according to its definition, an inspirer (muse: a state of deep thought or dreamy abstraction; Merriam-Webster). In the project, we identify and produce new forms of community action in start-up activities, which in turn produce sustainable well-being for more citizens, especially in working life, through the growth of skills.