We are to start this year with a lovely news and full of wonderful impressions which we bring from the participation on the project called „Three Seasons of Academic Entrepreneurship Exchange“, organised under the patronage of the University Business Academy in Novi Sad, and in regional cooperation with Stuttgart Media University from Stuttgart (Germany), University of Split Faculty of Economics, Split (Croatia), as well as with the Faculty of Organization and Informatics (FOI), University of Zagreb, Varazdin (Croatia).
This project „Three Seasons of Academic Entrepreneurship Exchange“ was commenced with the idea to show to the outer world that Western Balkans, as well as Germany, can keep within the area of entrepreneurial education and start-up initiations, and the topics of all the meet-ups organised in these four hosting cities were very tightly linked to the development of entrepreneurial skills, and also to understanding of values of entrepreneurial philosophy.
The aim of this cooperation, according to the organisers, was primarily to exchange the experience and know-how from the participants, but also to discover potential opportunities for long-term cooperations, and to acquire overall insight into the entrepreneurial education, start-up activities and start-up network of the organising universities.
More about the project:
Project consortium organized the visits of individual partnering universities throughout three seasons, and every partner organised the visit to his/her own partnering institution. The delegations had a chance to actively participate in the event as well as to be present on the visits, where, depending on the special programme focus, particular students, doctoral students and/or university professors would join in certain cities or touristic groups.
Meet-up in Novi Sad
After successful meet-ups in Split and Varazdin, the hosts from Novi Sad have welcomed their regional associates on the event with the main topic being Sustainable and inclusive start-ups, where one of the visiting professors was Professor Dr Dragan Ilic, establisher and director of Edu Evolution, followed by CEO of the organization, Mrs Tamara Ilic.
Professor Dr Dragan Ilic spoke about importance of inclusion of sensitive groups into the business activities, as well as about significance of accepting vulnerable social categories as equal ones in all business spheres, thus showing of the significance and trending of these values being one of the key EU values, but also a huge issue requiring system solutions. He furthermore emphasized how important it is to value the cultural differences and to get to the core of specific cultural values due to building up on business successes, notifying that self-employment and active involvement of vulnerable groups means the progress of entire society and can benefit to overall economy.
According to his words, these events are unique opportunity to combine academic society, company representatives, public sector and social society representatives and to try to use the dialogue and joint efforts to try resolving economic issues, to gain better grasping of social functioning, and to take important conclusions due to society progress in general.
The following important visitors were seen amongst the participants in Novi Sad: governmental representative of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Slavoljub Arsenijevic, Undersecretary of the Secretariate for Economy and Tourism; representative of the company „Manpower“ from Belgrade, Aleksandar Plavsin, expert for communications and marketing; representatives of the civil sector, entrepreneur Helena Vukovic from Novi Sad; representatives of local, successful start-ups, Aleksandar Ivanovic, specialist for investment funds etc…
Upon finalisation of the gathering in Novi Sad, the last event held there has been Entrepreneurial education related to the future cooperation with international summit about entrepreneurial education and Start-up weekend in Stuttgart (Germany), and further plan of the project associates is to commence the project for education and training of students for initiation of start-ups in the upcoming three years, on the territory of the entire Western Balkans.
Besides acquiring skills and know-how, the students will develop capacities for supporting and overcoming political barriers and quarrels of many decades, and they will gain understanding for differences of both national and religious communities.
