The Ph.D. level training in entrepreneurship like it's organized in KU Leuven should be developed and expanded in all European universities. There's a clear need to develop some best practices for this “through” approach, which integrates entrepreneurship into very high-level and challenging scientific problems that our Ph.D. students in engineering are working with in their research. Another valuable example of this principle can be seen in the Polito video below.

Students creating a Web-Startup at TUD, Germany is an excellent example of using a specific goal for a course. A best practice recommendation could be that it may be wise to focus on a specific topic, as having many groups doing different projects in one course can be a challenge to the teacher. The approach to the implementation is shortly outlined as being suitable for many engineering disciplines, employing a business model canvas and an “outside “ model (incl. interaction with external partners). By doing so the course wants to provide skills, experience and knowledge that students can apply in real life on short notice.

One approach used by IST Lisbon is to estimate the success of your entrepreneurial education by identifying the alumni of your programs and to look for the people who have succeeded to create startups. On the other hand, as skills and mindset are not the sole product of a single course and program, and the outcome of university training in future working life becomes more multidisciplinary, we also need to focus on developing best practices for novel and reliable assessment tools and pedagogies.

The approach of combining art, design and science is a goal for all universities worldwide. The KTH approach is a demonstration of the very concrete prototypes that teachers can implement in their projects and allow the creativity of the students to drive the process. It is important for teachers to strive to integrate multidisciplinary approaches into their teaching, however, it is clear that new teaching models need to be developed. If the aim is to combine art and engineering, we need to plan for teaching in teams of teachers, which in turn means that best practices should be developed for the pedagogy needed when more than one teacher is in charge. Working in teacher teams also means that universities must reserve time and resources for teachers to form well functioning groups.

Entrepreneurship is well acknowledged to be a mindset and we all recognize that mindsets develop from experiences and growing as a person. Our young generation of future students should become comfortable with their creativity and own potential in order to be able to appreciate the intricacies of entrepreneurial actions. Accordingly, all of our universities are reaching out to pre-university level education, of which one example is shown in the video. The webpages of all partner universities also have similar links to pre-university camps, events and competitions. These can give many interesting ideas and models for best practices for community outreach and better integration of universities into everyday life.

Social impact of education and research is one of the main drivers for European education. Polito presents an interesting, scientifically demanding program. This type of course or program requires significant teaching resources, integration with research and a wide and significant commitment by industry and other partners. The learning outcomes are very clear in this type of setting, as projects with industry can yield very concrete results both for the learner as well as the company. On the other hand, working with potential innovations and patents means that course design must take into account IPR, which may differ significantly in different countries. Importantly, the pedagogical competencies of all parties must be strong. Accordingly, our best practices should also ensure that partners from industry and society have sufficient pedagogical skills to support the learning of our students.