COEUR: developing business creativity and Europreneurship in European university networks.

Eickhoff, Matthias; Trigo, Virginia; Turnbull, Andrew; Dyczkowski, Tomasz

Abstract

This paper analyses the operating process and participants' feedback of a network of European universities that was set up in 2004, initially to organise annual week-long conferences for the development of students' entrepreneurial competences within a European context and in intercultural teams. Named COEUR - Competence in EuroPreneurship - the project builds on three assumptions: (1) open change and process-orientation require entrepreneurial competences rather than managerial qualifications; (2) business planning builds on a frequently neglected prerequisite: business creativity; and (3) entrepreneurial culture may exist on an intermediate level: EuroPreneurship. Soon the concept was extended to be integrated into regular university curricula as a full semester course - the Business Creativity Module (BCM) - which was developed and implemented with the support of the European Union between 2006 and 2008. Until now around 1,000 European students have participated in various COEUR/BCM programmes. A recent survey among former participants confirmed that not only was their immediate impression genuinely positive, but also, with the benefit of hindsight and after the first experiences in their professional lives, students judged the core values of the concept positively and believed that they had profited from it substantially. By exposing the process and results of the programme, this paper aims to contribute to the awareness of what higher-education institutions can do to enhance the creative and entrepreneurial potential of their students, and possibly serve as an inspiration too.

Citation

EICKHOFF, M., TRIGO, V., TURNBULL, A. and DYCZKOWSKI, T. 2014. COEUR: developing business creativity and Europreneurship in European university networks. Journal of advances in higher education, 6(1), pages 76-101.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 1, 2014
• Online Publication Date: Jan 1, 2014
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2014
• Deposit Date: Sep 9, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 9, 2016
• Journal: Journal of advances in higher education
• Print ISSN: 2212-5574
• Publisher: SPACE Network
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 76-101
• Keywords: Business creativity; Business creativity module (BCM); Competence in EuroPreneurship (COEUR)project; EuroPreneurship; Entrepreneurship
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/1632