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First Baltic Entrepreneurial Summer School 2012
Exactly 35 students and 15 teachers from Hogeschool Arnem-Nijmegen, Wageningen University, University of Latvia and Tallinna Tehnikakõrgkool joint this year the first Baltic Entrepreneurial Summer School in Tallinn, Estonia. The 10-day Summer School, financed by the EU Lifelong learning program, targeted professional (BA) and scientific bachelor (BSc) students from three countries, namely the Netherlands, Latvia and Estonia.
Students had a background in education, engineering and life-sciences. The program was sponsored by StartLife and managed by Education and Competence Studies. The Baltic Entrepreneurial Summer School was a unique experiment of entrepreneurial learning in interdisciplinary, intercultural teams. Students had to work in groups which had students from engineering, life-sciences, pedagogy and general social sciences backgrounds. Furthermore they represented countries which had completely different entrepreneurial histories (e.g. communism). Finally, the Summer School also included a mixture of universities and universities of applied sciences.
Developing entrepreneurial competence in higher education
Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education (EE) have gained popularity internationally. Historically, EE teaching and EE research are the domain of management and business economics teachers and scholars. Increasingly other study domains like life-sciences or health sciences acknowledge the added value of fostering entrepreneurial competence among their students; in the light of new career paradigms, lifelong learning, globalization, employability and a focus on innovation. Most teachers in higher education have a disciplinary background (e.g. biology, chemistry) with little prior knowledge in educational science and often no entrepreneurial hands-on experience. Surveys show that European graduates have a poor opinion of higher education as a contributor to their entrepreneurial skills (Allen & Van der Velden, 2009) and research indicates that teachers are considered to be a weak link in effectively introducing entrepreneurship education (McCoshan, 2010). Therefore, the overarching objective of this Summer School was to employ, exchange and co-create (new) practices for developing entrepreneurial competence in higher education.
Innovative ideas for Estonia
Students were selected based on their background, motivation, their experience with international work and their language skill. Additionally students were asked for a recommendation letter from a professor in their university. The program followed the entrepreneurial opportunity development process involving three distinct phases, opportunity identification, evaluation and pursuit. In order to guide the students through these processes companies were visited (e.g. Skype, SakuBrew, Tallink group), lectures were given and students had to work in groups on their entrepreneurial business idea which had to be connected to the hosting country, Estonia. After 10 days six groups launched their ideas for a jury of local experts. The winning group was awarded 1000 euro from StartLife. The six ideas ranged from high technological to social entrepreneurship. The proposition of the winning group, Necto, was to provide pubs/night clubs or cafes with fingerprint patented paying system (TouchPay) and, if needed, with locker system that is also based on the same technology.
Lessons learned
At the last day of the Summer School we asked all the students the following question, ‘has the programme given you a boost towards entrepreneurship’. Typical answers we got were: Yes, because before this programme I did not know almost anything in that field, but after lectures and group work now I can say that I know many good and useful things about business plans. How to write it and that definitely need to take a risk, otherwise you never will get something. You need to be confident (student from Latvia). Another example: yes, because it has opened my eyes in many ways. Before coming to this program I knew I want to explore more about entrepreneurship world, but I didn't have any experiences so far. So this programme was an excellent opportunity to find it out. And what I realised is that I would really like to be an entrepreneur for one day (student from Estonia). Overall students rated the Summer School with a 3.9 on a 5-point scale.
To continue its success and improve it further, we have developed with the same team Summer School 2013, including two new partners from the Czech Republic and Germany. Additionally, StartLife has given the opportunity to develop an in-depth, parallel teaching program for next year. For those students and teachers interested in the Baltic Entrepreneurial Summer School 2013, let us know. Be quick, because places are limited.