This international summer school has been taught for over 10 years, and was preceded by a Dutch Summer School ‘Entrepreneurship’. The basic idea is that the students make a jump in the field of entrepreneurship, that after the international summer school they will be more entrepreneurial than before. 17 students from all over the world joined this international summer school this year. During the program, several people joined parts of the program. Next to the coordinator, eight guest lecturers provided the education.
The main assignment of this international summer school is the ‘Business Model Canvas for Start-ups & Scale-ups’, in which the students in teams have to develop their own business idea. The teams consist of students who did not know each other before. So, international collaboration is a crucial aspect of this international summer school. Next to that, each student has to write an essay about how she/he is going to contribute to the realization of one Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), focusing on why she/he is the right person to contribute to the realization of this SDG. The essays were very personal and committed.
Also this year, the international summer school has yielded very interesting and feasible business ideas. According to the coordinator, Professor Enno Masurel, the best business idea was ‘Fashionality’, that focuses on fashion for people in wheelchairs. He says: ‘the students of ‘Fashionality’ were very convincing about the challenges for people who use wheelchairs when it comes to fashion; according to them, standard fashion mostly is not fit for people who sit in a wheelchair for a long time’. He also indicated that the students were very convincing about the commercial feasibility of this business idea as well.
All teams received an invitation to join the program of the Demonstrator Lab at the Vrije University, the organization for pre-incubation of start-ups in Amsterdam.
For more information, mail the coordinator at e.masurel@vu.nl