Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic has been chosen to the list of pilot universities of Ukraine, in which the educational course “Innovative entrepreneurship and startup project managing” will start from the first semester of the 2020-2021 academic year. It will be integrated in the subjects taught at university, or the students will be able to study it as a separate subject of choice.
Polytechnic students will have an integrated course on innovative entrepreneurship and startup project managing, and will be able to bring their own business ideas to life. The best students’ startups will participate in a competition and receive personal mentoring support from Yep, Дія.Бізнес, Ukrainian Startup Fund, Cisco, ОККО, Genesis, REACTOR.UA, TechUkraine and other partners of the project.
The main goal of the project is to develop entrepreneurship and startup movement at universities of Ukraine. The founders of the project believe that the introduction of such innovations is an important step for the development of Ukrainian business ecosystem; the new academic course will make for teaching a whole generation of youth modern entrepreneurship with the best world standards.
According to the Ministry of Education of Science of Ukraine, the course program has been reviewed by international partners and experts, such as North Carolina State University (USA), University of Tartu (Estonia), the ex-director of the startup accelerator of Tel Aviv University Olena Donets.
University teachers will do preparatory training for this course online on August, 26-28 and will have continuous support of the experts and mentors of YEP.
YEP! is a chain of academic startup incubators. The project team creates an ecosystem of youth entrepreneurship in Eastern Europe, and gives youth the opportunities for personal and professional development, and a chance to try to build their own startup in 3 months.
“We have been working with universities for a long time, but it is the first time that we’ve tried to integrate startup management into the educational process. Students’ work with startups will be counted as an element of education at university. It is very important that we continue enhancing the qualification of the teachers of this course,” the founder of YEP Andrii Zaikin commented.
According to the Director General of the Directorate of Science and Innovations at the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine Yuliia Bezvershenko, Ukrainian inventors and startup founders have a limited access to knowledge about how to turn their designs or creative ideas into innovative products and services.
“Today, Ukrainian inventors, innovators and startup founders have a limited access to the knowledge on how to turn their designs or creative ideas into innovative products and services. So, we hope that this project will extend the possibilities of such access. On the one hand, the course will give new knowledge and practice to students and teachers; on the other hand, it will allow universities to attract additional funds from realizing their ideas. It is also important that the course have an emphasize on cases with scientific elements,” Yuliia Bezvershenko said.
“The national project Дія.Бізнес covers complex and sufficient help for entrepreneurs by creating an ecosystem of their support. It is important for us that people begin their own business and develop it successfully. Forming the necessary skills at university is an important element of our project in this context,” the Deputy Minister for Eurointegration of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Valeriia Ionan said.
The universities that participate in this program will be able to join the next stages of the “Entrepreneur University” project.
The project is realized by the YEP Startup Incubator together with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Дія.Бізнес, and Ukrainian Startup Fund with the support of the USAID program “Competitive Economic of Ukraine”
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