Milan Polytechnic University: Experience-Oriented Entrepreneurship Education

Abstract

Milan Polytechnic University (Polimi) is the largest Italian technical university. Its primary purpose is to provide students with solid technical competences. Recent studies on student entrepreneurship at Polimi have shown that the technical competences of Polimi alumni frequently generate new business ideas that often lead to start-ups. Thus, the university’s School of Management has devoted growing attention to teaching students how to commercially exploit business opportunities by starting new ventures. For this purpose, it has developed an “experience-oriented approach” for its curriculum. This approach makes students test themselves in real-world settings through the development of a business model for an entrepreneurial idea. The approach is based on lectures from professors, guest lectures from practitioners, assisted work groups with mentor assignments as well as on the selection and development of business ideas. Both undergraduate and postgraduate students were found to value this experienced-based approach. Besides its curricular offer, Polimi performs extra-curricular EE activities through its business incubator, PoliHub. PoliHub staff is marginally involved in curricular courses for Polimi students and provides actual and prospective incubated entrepreneurs with education opportunities. Moreover, it offers a number of non-education services to incubated companies. The Polimi case suggests that an experience-oriented approach should be tailored to the characteristics of the target group of students. The approach may easily be applied at any university where students develop technical competences or are trained to enter creative industries.