Rethinking entrepreneurship education within universities: knowledge sharing as value proposition

Academic entrepreneurship, i.e. new firms that involve former students and researchers are especially important as a source of high-tech ventures and technology transfer from university. This is one of the reasons for the steady increase of entrepreneurship courses within university curricula observed in Italy during the last decade. Besides the supply of entrepreneurship courses one of the most promising ways to promote entrepreneurship is the creation of an organized ‘space’ where students can meet, attend workshops and seminars and above all have the opportunity to meet entrepreneurs, business angels, etc. while working at their own entrepreneurial idea. The ‘space’ will host students following different curricula; from humanities to engineering. The contamination of expertise and skills should facilitate the generation of new ideas. Moreover, the formation of heterogeneous teams is expected to raise the success rates of the new ventures. The paper discusses in details how such a space could be organized, the activities that could be carried out to attain its goals and the rules for the admission of students. This discussion is based on the review of the relevant literature and on a specific project carried out at the Università Politecnica delle Marche (Ancona, Italy).