Page 84 - guidance-supporting-europe-s-aspiring-entrepreneurs-policy-and-practice-to-harness-future-potential

Guidance supporting Europe’s aspiring entrepreneurs
Policy and practice to harness future potential

All students – regardless of whether they win or not in the competition –
should receive formal feedback from the judges: what worked, what did not, what
needs to be improved (Volkmann et al., 2009). This ensures that all participants
gain from the experience.

3.3.3. Other approaches
Enterprise familiarisation activities can also be tied into non-school based
activities. An interesting example comes from the municipality of Botkyrka in
Sweden, which runs a programme called Summer holiday entrepreneurs. It is
available to students who have not managed to secure a work placement for the
summer months. Participants need to have a business idea (e.g. to sell a
product), then the municipality will give them a small amount of money to start
their business, from which they will then have to generate their own income.
Within the overall drive to increase entrepreneurial thinking, there is a desire
to help students to think about the benefits of running their own business, but
also help them recognise the positive impact that enterprising attitudes can have
on others and in every area of their own live. This was the motivation behind the
Christmas market project set up by the Roskilde Business College in Denmark.
The project involved setting up and running a Christmas market for which local
enterprises donated (or sold cheaply) Christmas merchandise (European
Commission, 2010a). Students were responsible for the entire organisation,
which meant that they had to embrace a ‘can-do’ attitude and had to be very
innovative as their budget was limited. The market was very successful, making a
profit which the students donated to a charity.
In Iceland, the BYKO project was introduced to encourage creative thinking
among IVET students. The project involves students choosing an already existing
product and transforming it into a different product that would be marketable
(Jónsdóttir, 2009).

3.4. Guiding through business simulation games and
exercises

Business simulation games and exercises give young people the opportunity to
set up their own company within a protected environment, i.e. their school or a
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virtual community ( ). The objective is to allow students to develop and take part

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( ) Such games are typically known as mini-companies, though many other variations of the name
exist.

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