Key is to get started, says Summer School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation

It's never too late or too early for summer school. This was presented by the summer school focused on innovation and entrepreneurship, which took place in the week of 6-10 November at the Faculty of Business and Management BUT in the Inprofo Lab. The event featured nearly a dozen startups from several faculties of Brno University of Technology and a number of nascent business ideas. Almost a hundred participants found their way to the summer school.

What made the Summer School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation 2023 interesting? "It was definitely not meant to gain attention just by its unconventional date. The important thing was that it took place as one of the events within the start of the VUT contriBUTe Innovation and Entrepreneurship Ecosystem, which has thus moved into the next phase of its development," said one of the organizers of the event, Robert Zich from the Faculty of Business and Management BUT.

"Its aim is to create conditions for the development and promotion of entrepreneurship at the BUT, which can significantly help with the development of knowledge transfer, which is very important for a technical university," explained Robert Zich.

The entire Tuesday programme was devoted to a series of workshops ranging from the development of a business idea, an introduction to the BUT Student Entrepreneurship Award competition as an example of promoting innovation and entrepreneurship and other activities within contriBUTe, to a symbolic evening of "failures" called Dark Stories of Business.

Wednesday " took" the participants to the north of Europe, where they went together with the partner of the event, which was the Finnish Tampere University of Applied Sciences and in particular its Proakatemia centre dedicated to business education. On the agenda were workshops focused on the Finnish model of promoting entrepreneurship, online presentations about the Nordic Business Forum and a fair of interesting projects from Finland and the BUT.

The last two days were dedicated to a hackathon - a 24 hour challenge. Participating student teams worked on a project for a company doing business in the area referred to as "web 3.0".

In addition to the realization that it is never too late for summer school, but also never too early, the meeting offered another brief but key message: "There was a simple recommendation from the participants who already have some experience with entrepreneurship - you just need to get started. The lack of entrepreneurial confidence to take this crucial step can be helped by events or competitions just like the one held at the beginning of November at the Faculty of Business and Management." Robert Zich concluded.

Invitation to the next roundtable

If you missed the summer school, you have one more opportunity in November. We invite you to a discussion roundtable with the subtitle Startup, spin-off or just a new company? What to expect, what to prepare for and why it sometimes doesn't work out? This meeting will take place on 30 November at 16:00, again at the Inprofo Lab at the Faculty of Business and Management BUT. We look forward to another inspiring meeting.

Authors: Robert Zich, Petr Kubíček