Entrepreneurship - Skills Building Practice

Innovator: Alba Kruja, https://www.linkedin.com/in/alba-demneri-kruja-24a3b6136

Organisation: Epoka University, Tirana

Setting of the practice: face to face 

Description of the practice:

I teach entrepreneurship in tertiary education, and my focus is on teaching transferable skills to the students. These skills that students gain are useful in their future role as entrepreneurs in a corporation, or as entrepreneurs in building a start-up. The course is built on an experiential learning approach, where students build different skills through different experiments. Students are first taught to find their passion, and next convert their passion to a purpose of contributing to society.

As they find their purpose, next they are directed on finding, validating, and solving a problem of the community they care about. Moreover, they are provided a deep understanding of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and are instructed on how to leverage entrepreneurial skills and knowledge to address the SDGs. This approach is a value co-creation approach on the aspect of the students as entrepreneurs and the target market where they are focusing on building a niche. The passion that they have on this problem drives students to build a differentiated solution to the problem. Throughout the semester students are guided on how to build the find, validate a problem and next build a profitable solution, through which at the same time they gain entrepreneurial skills.