Imagine a university created in 1913, in a city from the countryside and, for almost 90 years, the only area of study was engineering. This was the reality of UNIFEI (Itajubá Federal University). Now imagine how difficult it was to bring a new vision to all the students and professors who had just engineering classes, a vision called “Entrepreneurship”. This was not just difficult in UNIFEI, but in almost every university in Brazil.
New century, new actions
With the end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21th Century, a business Incubator was created inside the university campus, called INCIT. At this moment, the deep tech movement emerges in our ecosystem, with the creation of several startups in this area.
But in 2012 it was created the Centro de Empreendedorismo Unifei (Unifei Entrepreneurship Center), a place formed by professors and students to spread the entrepreneurial culture and innovation throughout the university.
Centro de Empreendedorismo Unifei (CEU) was created to work as an Innovation Hub, an institution to connect the Triple Helix, connecting companies and the government with the university and, at the same time, developing new entrepreneurs for our community and our ecosystem and spreading the entrepreneurial culture throughout the university.
Centro de Empreendedorismo Unifei (CEU) development
Since its creation, CEU has impacted 1500 people per year, and helped the development of more than 50 startups and more than 100 founders, creating an innovative and vibrant community.
The development of our community and of new startups happens through a filter (figure 1), in which everything starts in entrepreneurial classes in engineering and business courses and, after that, the students begin a journey of entrepreneurship and innovation through events and hackathons, which helps them to transform their ideas in startups, with the support of CEU. In the end, these startups and their founders come back to help the development of new entrepreneurs in our community in a culture that we call “Give-Back Culture”.
Figure 1 - Filter of Development
CEU Nowadays
Nowadays, we have around 30 members, divided in 5 areas: Community Builders, responsible for interacting with our external community; Content Heroes, responsible for the creation of our marketing initiatives; Event Makers, responsible for the creation and idealization of our events; People Lovers, the human resources area inside the project; and Startup Helpers, responsible for the creation of new startups and the pre-acceleration program.
During the year, we organise several events and initiatives to engage the students in the entrepreneurial movement in the university. When we put together all the initiatives, we have an entrepreneurial journey (Figure 2) that starts with “Cria”, an event focused on introducing entrepreneurship and innovation topics to the new students of the university and students from the High-school. After that, we organise several hackathons and events for the students to have practical experience, such as: techstars_ Startup Weekend, an event for you to create a startup in 54 hours; Maratona GirlsCode, a coding marathon for girls to develop a software in one day; Nasa Space Apps Challenge, a global hackathon created by NASA to create solutions for world problems; and many other events. In the end of the journey, the person can choose between two paths: Participate in LAB001, our pre-acceleration program, in which the participants will accelerate the development of their startups in 3 months; The other path is to participate in Ninja Startup Job, an opportunity to work in a startup during the vacation period from the university.
Figure 2 - Entrepreneurial Journey of CEU
Through these initiatives, CEU strengthens the university’s engagement with society, reflecting the ACEEU Standard Third Mission Activities and impact by connecting students, startups, and external partners.
Conclusion: How to create your CEU in your university/college?
Every Institution that comes to visit us asks the same thing: “How can we create our own CEU?” To create your own, it´s not something that will be possible in months, but it needs a lot of engagement and energy, from both professors and students.
For a start, you will not need a lot of money, but you will need people to go with you in this journey and dedication.
Experiences like CEU illustrate how entrepreneurial initiatives within universities can evolve into meaningful engagement with society, embodying the spirit of the ACEEU standards on Third Mission Activities, Culture and Impact.
So, let’s create the future? We are with our doors open to help you in this movement, so don´t be shy and contact us.
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Images courtesy of the author