Contamination Lab of Turin (CLabTo)

Abstract

Interest in offering Entrepreneurship Education (EE) to all kinds of university students is increasing. Therefore, universities are increasing the number of entrepreneurship courses intended for students from different fields of study and with different education levels. Through a single case study of the Contamination Lab of Turin (CLabTo), we suggest how EE may be taught to all kinds of university students. We have combined design methods with EE to create a practical-oriented entrepreneurship course which allows students to work in transdisciplinary teams through a learning-by-doing approach on real-life projects. Professors from different departments have been included to create a multidisciplinary environment. We have drawn on programme assessment data, including pre- and post-surveys. Overall, we have found a positive effect of the programme on the students’ entrepreneurial skills. However, when the data was broken down according to the students’ fields of study and education levels, mixed results emerged.

Entrepreneurship education around the world: A possible comparison

“…However, recently, universities have increased attention towards entrepreneurship education as a part of their third mission (Fiore, Sansone, Remondino & Tamborrini, 2019). In this direction, the Italian Ministry of University and Research started to promote the diffusion of entrepreneurial culture and innovation in higher education, "aimed at facilitating the creation of value by focusing on concrete opportunities for interactions between universities, research entities, enterprises, and other societal actors" (OECD, 2019).…”

“…436) as a pilot program in four southern regions. The CLab program is a nationally funded program that now has 22 CLabs in Italy (Fiore et al, 2019).…”

“…CLab is a recent program, and for this reason, not many studies have been carried out yet. Recent researches (Fiore et al, 2019;Secundo, Mele, Sansone & Paolucci, 2020) have examined some case studies to understand the impact of CLab on students in developing entrepreneurial skills and an entrepreneurial mindset. Those researches underline the success factors as interdisciplinarity, virtuous contamination of knowledge and experience between students and the stakeholder, soft skills development such as teamwork, communication, and networking skills.…”