EEE National Launch at the University of Szeged – a Full Day Program about Young Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship Education Entrepreneurship Teaching Modules National Launch Regional Ecosystems University of Szeged

University of Szeged has recently held its national launch where the audience could get an insight about the challenges and opportunities of nowadays young (Generation Z) entrepreneurs and the ways how their competences can be fostered. The EEE event was attended by over 50 regional business partners, stakeholders, academics and students. The focus of the event was the EEE specialized course, that involved local entrepreneurs as lecturers and mentors of the students. In the plenary session four presentations were delivered by project representatives, students and external stakeholders of the EEE semester program.

In his presentation Dr. Norbert Buzas has focused on the function of accelerators, characteristics of modern day entrepreneurs, and approaches to provide this new generation of entrepreneurs the best assistance during their development. Márk Olajos a young entrepreneur, who was involved as a mentor in the EEE course, highlighted the main challenges that nowadays Generation Y and Z entrepreneurs are facing. The third presenter Dr. Szabolcs Pronay introduced the EEE Teaching Toolkit to the audience, describing the methodology to be followed in successfully integrating the modules into the course programs, as well as indicating the potential barriers that can be faced in the process. The last presenter of the plenary session was Attila Tóth – a student who participated in the EEE semester course. He highlighted how the course learnings have had an impact on students’ mindset and equipped him with the right skills to successfully launch his start-up (called: Pricemind). The plenary session was followed by a workshop on the pathways to integrate regional stakeholders in entrepreneurial course program development and delivery.

Following plenary sessions and the workshop, in the afternoon, there was a joint event, the national final of a new presentation challenge, called “Prezilimpia – the Presentation Olympics”. This new challenge was co-organized and co-hosted by the Hungarian EEE team and it aimed to foster the presentation and pitching skills of the young entrepreneurs. 8 young entrepreneurs competed in front of the jury of local entrepreneurs and professional presenters. With this joined event a county-wide audience was reached and the program of the EEE National Launch was boosted to a full-day program about young (Generation Z) entrepreneurs, that also generated a larger media coverage.

© All rights for the images used in this post belong to the University of Szeged

Teaching Future Entrepreneurs at the University of Szeged
Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship Education University of Szeged

A practical approach has been introduced at the University of Szeged, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, to teach and encourage students from different disciplines to become entrepreneurs.

The course promoting entrepreneurial thinking has taken place in the international Erasmus+ framework. One of the most important missions of the European Union is to encourage the younger generation to become entrepreneurs. Therefore, university students, who represent a high proportion of the young generation, provide an excellent basis to whom entrepreneurship can be promoted.

Why exactly in Szeged?

The University of Szeged is one of the biggest Hungarian universities. There are 25,000 students studying different sciences at its 12 Faculties. Not only the students from the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration can become entrepreneurs. It is becoming more and more important that students from other disciplines gain insight into entrepreneurship. Due to the diversity of disciplines at the University of Szeged and the successful Master’s Business Development training program at the Faculty of Economics, the experimental course has good foundations to be implemented in the future.

Novelty of the course: the attractiveness of entrepreneurial examples

The traditional university programmes are based on a course or seminar, where instructors teach and students take notes. At the end of each semester, students take the appropriate tests. Though more and more courses in the topic of becoming entrepreneurs leave the traditional teaching method behind, they do not always prove to be successful. The organizers of this new course tried to rethink the traditional teaching model based on their previous experiences.

Students could apply with a covering letter and with an introduction of an entrepreneurial idea. The aim of the organizers was to attract only those students, who are serious about becoming entrepreneurs and are willing to take part in courses for their professional development. They wanted to deter those students, who would only have participated in the course for collecting additional credits.

Regarding teachers, organizers invited those people, who are entrepreneurs themselves and have a practice in teaching, or they included those teachers, who have real and first-hand experience on the market. Therefore, they would be able to transfer their own market experience to students. Entrepreneurs and teachers have both participated in the organisation and implementation. Almost 30 entrepreneurs and teachers took part in the course who received a teaching toolkit developed during the EEE course.

From apartment-restaurants to co-working offices

Students worked on 5 project ideas. Based on these ideas, students had to develop and introduce a complete business plan at the end of the semester. Some students had to change the concept of their business, because they had encountered certain problems which could have undermined the basic aim of their enterprise. This happened in case of the co-working office, which was an apartment-restaurant concept originally.

Throughout the course, students worked on the development of a business software, which could monitor the different prices on web shops. Others were concerned with the development of a software, providing financial contribution for animal shelters, while another group worked on a local craft beer manufactory and a social pub-finder application. The final business plans were presented in front of a professional board. The members of the board did not see the completed concepts before. Therefore, they could evaluate the concepts without bias and could provide feedback for the students.

The Facebook page containing the course’s final presentations and pictures can be found on the following link.

 

© All rights on images used in this article belong to University of Szeged, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.

 

Szeged holds its second alliance meeting
Entrepreneurship Education Regional Alliances

University of Szeged recently held its second alliance meeting with the participation of representatives from local businesses and entrepreneurs. The meeting fostered strengthening the ties among the alliance members, marked by an action plan signed by the USZ EEE Project management and the attendees. 

During the first meeting, USZ offered several opportunities for the stakeholders, mostly local entrepreneurs, to take part in the EEE Entrepreneurship semester course that will run from September to December.

After the first meeting, attendants of the meeting were sent out a needs assessment questionnaire, as well the participants who could not attend but express their interest, in which they were able to indicate their expressions of interest and the form of involvement.

Based on the feedback from this assessment questionnaire, USZ finalised the program of the course by defining:

  • List of persons involved
  • Tasks undertaken by involved parties
  • Offered educational program elements, e.g. topic of lectures, tasks of students and call for competition.

During the second alliance meeting, together with the participating entrepreneurs, University of Szeged confirmed this program and signed an Action Plan that demonstrated the mutual commitment from all the parties involved in the project. The discussions lead to collaborative efforts among the business leaders and entrepreneurs to form bonds that will potentially live beyond the project.

The next step – the third alliance meeting – will take place in early September, when all the practical details will be finalised about the involvement of the stakeholders, and the EEE entrepreneurship semester course can be launched.

USZ selects 8 project ideas for the EEE course
Entrepreneurship Education

The first round of application for the EEE course at the University of Szeged has been finalised on 31st of May. The EEE course was promoted at 12 faculties at the university and received a positive response from several media. The promotional campaign was supported by the leading economist journal in Hungary as well as by the most influential local TV and radio stations.

The students had to submit a motivational letter as the application to the course that had to include the following questions and answers: why do the applicants want to join the EEE course, what are their expectations and if they have, what are the ideas that they want to further develop during the EEE course?

The Hungarian organisers plan to hold the course with maximum 10 project ideas that the students will work on during the whole semester: 1 project idea – 1 team and 3 mentors (1 entrepreneur, 1 professor and 1 student from a business MA program). During the first recruitment round 8 ideas have been selected based on the information provided by the applicants. Most of the applicants represent more or less application-oriented scientific disciplines, but most of the applicants have not taken part in business education yet, thus they expect to improve their entrepreneurial skills and experiences relating to how to start a business. The students are studying natural and formal sciences (informatics, mathematics, geography, biology), engineering (mechanical engineer, food engineering) and a few of them social sciences (psychology).

The submitted project ideas also cover various topics, typically small and medium sized business ideas as well as online selling (online advertising, fishing webshop, etc.), gastro businesses (brewery, healthy foods, etc.), financial services and agriculture. Some of the applicants already took steps to establish a company.

The second round of the recruitment campaign will start in late August during the regular course-application period in the University.  If more valuable project ideas will be received, then the organisers will consider to create new teams or merge project ideas that cover similar topics, but the main focus will be to fulfil the teams with other members providing diversity.