I&E Minor

All the technical majors (Data Science, Human-Computer Interaction & Design, Fintech) are complemented with the Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I&E) Minor to foster entrepreneurial education.

I&E Education has a significant position within the Master School, following the philosophy of EIT to effectuate students towards transferring their knowledge and ideas into new feasible businesses and innovation activities. EIT Digital Master School aims at educating computer engineers to become digital innovators with an entrepreneurial mindset.

Entrepreneurial skills are considered a core competency of top talent in any organisation. Best-in-class engineers and researchers combine excellence in science and technology with outstanding entrepreneurial behaviour. Therefore, a set of 4 modules on Innovation & Entrepreneurship along with specific learning activities are co-designed and offered to EIT Digital students by all the partner universities across the 2 years: I&E Basics, BDLab, I&E Summer School, I&E Study.

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I&E Minor – first year at Polimi

In the first semester at Polimi, the I&E Basics module builds fundamental knowledge of innovation and entrepreneurship matters. It includes:

• a curricular academic course taught at Management Engineering and included in all the EIT Digital study plans (eg. Strategy & Marketing)

• an online module by EIT Digital with some online video lectures on Digital Transformation and a joint project in which students at Polimi will cooperate remotely with EIT Digital students from other universities on a case study (Distributed Students Activity)

In the second semester, the Business Development Lab (BDLab) module provides a more hands-on experience on innovation and new business development. It includes:

• a completely project-based laboratory, attended by EIT Digital students along with Management Engineering students (eg. Designing Digital Business Innovation Lab)

• a suite of online contents (BDLab red-thread) co-produced by EIT Digital and different partner universities to support BDLab projects, covering topics such as Design Thinking, Advanced Business Models, Business Ethics and Sustainability, Commercialization Strategies, Leadership

A series of Innovation Talks related to digital transformation, change management and technology entrepreneurship are organised during the year by Polimi (on campus) and other partner universities (online), with invited speakers from companies and startups sharing success stories, business challenges, innovation strategies.

After the first year

Between the first and the second year, students attend one of the thematic I&E Summer Schools organized by EIT Digital across Europe on various emerging topics, engaging in an innovation challenge of two weeks.

In the second year, all the exit universities deploy the last module (I&E Study) in which all EIT Digital students deal with real company cases, provided by industrial partners addressing real business pains and challenges, to put into practice what they have learned along this I&E education path.

The I&E modules will be increasingly offered in a blended format, combining on-campus activities and online contents, resources and innovative teaching methods (blended learning, distributed students activities, cross-university projects, joint lectures and remote electives).

I&E Community of Practice

EIT Digital blended I&E Education is developed by the EIT Digital I&E Education Community of Practice, constituted of teachers and researchers from different partner universities who co-design, co-develop, co-deliver and continuously improve I&E pedagogical assets for all the EIT Digital students. This is instrumental in raising the quality of the I&E modules, by sharing the best expertise available in the EIT Digital universities network, while fostering the EIT Digital signature in I&E education.

EIT Digital believes in the digital transformation of education and therefore offers innovative education activities in a cross-university distributed learning environment, combining both on-campus and online remote projects. Distributed students activities make it possible to break down time, place, and scalability barriers, whilst also promoting greater diversity in teachning methods and pedagogical approaches.

Publications and Research

• The EIT Digital methodology for deep pedagogical cooperation and educational change within a network of Europan universities was the subject of a publication at the International Conference on e-Learning (ICEL) 2018 (Change management: blended learning adoption in a large network of European universities, G Dion, JM Dalle, F Renouard & al.).

• EIT Digital blended I&E education was also the subject of another publication, presented at the EDULEARN 2018 conference (Towards blended learning implementation of Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I&E) education within EIT Digital, G Pisoni, F Renouard et al.) where EIT Digital shared its experience of best practice in the dissemination and blended use of contents, in experiential I&E education leveraging our community of practice to achieve real education change.

Discover more on I&E Education

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Some insights from our past I&E activities