During the months of February and March, 2023, a team from the University of Beira Interior’s (UBI) incubator – UBImedical – held five sessions regarding entrepreneurship in the disciplines of “Business Economy”, of the Marketing course, and “Portuguese and European Union Economy”, of the Economics and Business courses. These sessions were held in association with the EcoAction project, an EIT HEI initiative, supported by EIT Manufacturing, and coordinated by EIT Raw Materials, which intends to leverage institutions’ entrepreneurial and innovation knowledge models, and were to interact with the students in the following subjects: 1 – Design Thinking and Idea Planning; 2 – Intellectual Property; 3 – Business Workshop; 4 – Create a Business; 5 – Pitch Clinic.
During the five sessions, the students were invited to create a business regarding “Sustainable Cities and Circularity”, also being asked to develop an Idea Plan where the were asked to start by identifying a problem and develop a solution, but also to identify who their clients would be, and what would their value proposition be. During the sessions they also were invited to identify the market they will approach, as well as identifying their competitors and highlight the main aspects of their teams. Also, they were to identify how they would promote their idea/company, as well as how they would be distributing their products, and also who would their main partners be. Finally, they would have to identify what would their start-up costs be, as well as their operating costs, the revenue streams, and finally how will they finance their companies.
Finally, they would have to pitch in all this information in front of their colleagues, using the techniques that were provided during the sessions. All of the ideas/companies were also invited to participate in a pitching contest to be held at UBImedical in June/July, where they have the chance to win 5.000€ and 1-year of free incubation, also attending to an acceleration programme during that time, so that they can evaluate if their idea can be transformed into a real company.