Best practices for developing university bioentrepreneurship education programmes

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to present a comprehensive overview on the bioentrepreneurship education programme organised within the framework of the project ‘Technological Entrepreneurship at the Free University of Brussels (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, VUB)’. The main motivations for implementing this high-technology entrepreneurship education programme are the threats posed by the low entrepreneurial activity in Belgium and by the European innovation paradox. The biotechnology programme was implemented to stimulate and teach bioentrepreneurship among master students in business and bio-engineering at the university. The theoretical background of the paper focuses on entrepreneurship education in an academic environment and relating success factors to discover possible solutions. Following this, the paper presents a case study on the bioentrepreneurship programme implemented at the VUB. The main objective of the project is to develop and implement a set of integrated, interdisciplinary courses, organised by different faculties and attended by students in business and in bio-engineering. By presenting this solution and showing that it is possible to implement an interdisciplinary educational programme on bioentrepreneurship in a university environment, the authors suggest increasing the number of such programmes across European universities.