Merging Entrepreneurship into Mechanical Engineering

Joao Monney Paiva & Maria Odete Monteiro Lopes, Instituto Tecnico de Viseu (Portugal)

An important developing policy in the European Union is to enhance the ability of graduated students to create their own jobs. The Operations Management course at ESTV was established to bring together the classic contents of designing, organizing, and implementing operations strategy, with entrepreneurship in mind. The introduction of entrepreneurial skills has been an established goal since 1999 under the guidelines of the Bologna Declaration. Classes take place in labs with easy Internet access. The four initial weeks are used to approach the main subjects based on case studies. A short entrepreneurship course is provided. Students are expected to state their own idea of an innovative service within an existing enterprise or of an enterprise
itself. This session ends with insight on the final assignments and on the impact and level of success.

>>Read the peer-reviewed paper here (PDF)