• Main Authors: A. Gjengedal, V. Alvarstein, B. Fossheim, S. A. R. Pedersen, A. P. Rudi
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Index Terms; Business Establishment; Entrepreneurship; Problem based learning; Norway; Tromsø
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.462.8830; http://www.ineer.org/Events/ICEE2008/full_papers/full_paper308.pdf

Entrepreneurship (Business establishment) is a 20 credit point (ECTS) course during two semesters in the second year of the engineering education at Tromsø University College. In the first semester the students establish teams, generate and select a business idea and develop a business plan with a budget. In the second semester the students run the business and close it at the end of the semester. The paper describes the background for the course, goal, contents, teaching methods, assessment methods and experiences with the course. Statistics and examples of businesses are presented. The first week is a kick-off seminar where the teams are established, business ideas are generated, the ideas are evaluated, and the best and realizable ideas are selected. During the first semester the business plans are developed and presented for a panel of representatives from local business, innovation system and the tutors to get feedback. The teams also make a plan for the entire course. Lectures on diverse subjects are given, such as presentation techniques, marketing, intellectual property rights, economics (budgeting and accounting), business organization and board responsibilities and work. Several local entrepreneurs have presented their experiences in the process of establishment of new businesses as guest lectures. There is also a seminar on commercialization of new products and research results. In the second semester the businesses are run under the concept of “Junior Achievement-Young Enterprise Norway”. The semester starts with a one day practical course in economics (a game called Economy Illustrator)