Fostering Entrepreneurship for the Bioeconomy

Summary

FOEBE equips bioeconomy students with sustainable entrepreneurship skills to speed up the European expansion of the bioeconomy sector. The project is centered around a blended learning format, which combines 8 online learning modules and face-to-face classroom sessions in an intensive study week.

Introduction/Background

Current entrepreneurship training programmes are not tailored to the needs of the bioeconomy sector, which hampers its development potential. Furthermore, there is a lack of a European approach in this respect, despite bioeconomy appearing high on the policy agenda. By jointly developing content at the EU level would enable students (i.e., entrepreneurs to be) to have a vision encompassing all dimensions of the bioeconomy in such context. The project is funded by the Erasmus+ program

Project description

The project is centered around a blended learning format, which combines online learning and face-to-face classroom sessions with a focus on innovative teaching practices. In spring FOEBE offers a suite of online modules that students enrolled in can attend as extra or elective courses. This is topped by a face-to-face, intensive study week in one of the partner cities. Students come from a wide variety of graduate studies. FOEBE results in an “enhanced curriculum” compatible with the graduate curricula in bioeconomy Masters, or PhD programmes currently offered in European HEIs. Each year 5 students from the Mr of Biobased Sciences of WUR participated in the project.

Results

BMO was responsible for Module 5 on business management, especially Strategic management and the Sustainable business model canvas. Dr Emiel F.M. Wubben enabled the online module contents, the online class, and participated in the study weeks.