coeur (competence in europreneurship) business creativity: a new educational challenge for european...

COEUR (Competence in Europreneurship)

Business Creativity: A New Educational Challenge for European Students

Presentation at the XV International Scientific Conference: Human Capital and Investment in Education

Andrew Turnbull The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland

Prof. Dr. Matthias EickhoffInstitute for Entrepreneurial Behaviour IUHFachhochschule Mainz University of Applied Sciences, Germany

Entrepreneurship Theory

• Entrepreneurship needs to be considered more as an European, not just an US, phenomenon, with local adaptation of the entrepreneurial mindset

• All European societies need to be entrepreneurial with focus on the entrepreneur, developing entrepreneurial people and profitable business opportunities

COEUR Business Creativity Module

XV International Scientific Conference: Human Capital and Investment in Education

Europreneurship

“Encouragingly, a new business generation is emerging in Europe, with shared

aspirations, values and outlooks. The common features among Europe’s 20

and 30-something entrepreneurs are far more striking than the differences”

(Leadbeater and Ussher 1999)



Europreneurship

• Europe needs new entrepreneurs, more now than ever!

• Entrepreneurship education is on the increase but the creative/innovation stage lacks focus

• Cross border collaboration and exchange is also desirable – less than 20% of faculty teach internationally

• Sharing of good practice needed, supported by joint research and new materials





COEUR

Competence

in

European Entrepreneurship

COEUR offers a platform for a variety of activities, benefits and services for numerous stakeholders:

ConferencesPublications

BenchmarkingNetworking

Idea GenerationResearch

and many more…

Idea Generation

COEUR Business Creativity ModuleXV International Scientific Conference: Human Capital and Investment in Education

The Initial Idea 1996

”We want to organise a conference, where students from different universities meet in an open atmosphere of initiative, creativity and

responsibility to learn with experienced entrepreneurs and to establish a common basis

for the entrepreneurial future in a Europe of regions, forming a nucleus for development and

change, a junction in a quickly developing European business-culture.“

Matthias Eickhoff FH Mainz – University of

Applied Sciences

Andrew Turnbull Robert-Gordon University, Aberdeen



COEUR (5 day) Workshops

First held in 2004 in Mainz, Germany and

since in 4 other European countries. Also

in China and Brazil! 10th conference just

completed in Wroclaw, Poland. Now an

accredited source of ECTS for

participating students.

Workshop Focus

• Recognising the role and importance of an entrepreneurial perspective

• Social skills

• Presentation skills

• Intercultural competences

• Language exercise

• Supported by key note speeches, creativity training and idea check ups




The COEUR Business Creativity Module

• ‘Business Creativity’ is a one semester interdisciplinary module focused on problem definition and solution development

• Initially EU sponsored• Jointly delivered, starting 2007, at 8 European

universities (Pol,CZ, F, UK, Por, D and Est)• Students form intercultural Creative Venture

Teams (CVT) to develop entrepreneurial ideas with European dimension


The Business Evolution Process (Eickhoff & Jakob, 2004)


Experience creativity and entrepreneurial learning in intercultural teams

The COEUR-Basis

Euro-Preneurship

Process orientation

Business Creativity

Entrepreneurship Education

• Business planning already integrated into teaching programmes

• Business creativity and business development remain less well catered for

• Different tasks require different approaches and tools and all stages of new business evolution should be covered

• Innovation and creativity increasingly important in terms of responsiveness to unpredictable change

• Marketing mostly refers to deterministic or (based on Marketing Research) stochastic change



Delivery and Feedback

• The module is now well established via e-learning platforms (Wimba/Skype) and real life classes

• Virtual groups complete the assignments• 76% of (UK) students rated the module ‘very good’• Less than 5% rated it poor overall, but some concerns

were expressed about liaison and contact with students in other countries

• Assessment mechanisms combine practice and theory, with written and verbal elements

• Underlying concept and principles are understood and welcomed


Delivery and Feedback

“A really enjoyable module ... I would thoroughly recommend the whole

experience to other students”

... although:

“The module is a brilliant idea but students in different countries were often difficult to

get hold of and had different priorities”





A ‚leverage-effect‘ should serve to spread the COEUR-idea in Europe:

European Growth

European coverage is not expected by growth of the network but by

multiplication of university networks !

Competition and cooperation have been experienced


Thank you for your attention! Thank you VSFS!

For further information please contact

[email protected] or

[email protected]

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