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.

References

Research for this case was conducted by Evila Piva, Assistant Professor at Polimi, on behalf of the study for supporting the entrepreneurial potential of higher education (sepHE). Sources and references used include desk research plus:

1.1 Interviews

Prof. Massimo Colombo, Full Professor of Economics of Technical Change and Deputy Dean for Research at Polimi School of Management responsible for the High-Tech Entrepreneurship course, interviewed on Sept 5th 2014, in Milan

Francesca Tenca, PhD student at Polimi who has been tutor in the 2013/14 edition of the High-Tech Entrepreneurship course, interviewed on Sept 5th 2014, in Milan

Claudia Pingue, COO at PoliHub, and Domenico Pannofino, staff member at PoliHub, interviewed on Sept 10th 2014, in Milan

Dr. Raffaello Balocco, Assistant Professor at Polimi School of Management, involved in the EMBA entrepreneurship courses and responsible for the Entrepreneurship Academy courses, interviewed on Sept 11th 2014, in Milan

2 focus groups with small groups of students have been organized (for privacy reasons, the names of the students cannot be reported here)

• On Dec 2nd 2014: focus group with five students of the 2012 edition of the EMBA programme (i.e., students that started attending the EMBA programme in 2012 and thus attended the elective courses during 2014)

• On Dec 13th 2014: focus group with six undergraduate students who attended the High-Tech Entrepreneurship course during 2014

All these interviews were face-to-face interviews.

1.2 Websites

POLIHUB (2015) Website of Polimi incubator. http://www.polihub.it/en/. Accessed 5 Jan 2015

Polimi (2015) Programme of the high-tech entrepreneurship course. https://www4.ceda.polimi.it/manifesti/manifesti/controller/ManifestoPublic.do?EVN_DETTAGLIO_RIGA_MANIFESTO=evento&aa=2012&k_cf=225&k_corso_la=436&k_indir=XEN&codDescr=090917&lang=IT&semestre=2&idGruppo=2573&idRiga=150280. Accessed 4 Jan 2015

Polimi Business School (2015) Website of MIP. http://www.mip.polimi.it/mip/en.html. Accessed 5 Jan 2015

MIP (2015) Information on the Entrepreneurship Academy. http://www.mip.polimi.it/mip/it/Corsi-Brevi/Entrepreneurship.html. Accessed 5 Jan 2015