Boost Your Entrepreneurial Spirit 2025: a week of international training in entrepreneurship for EUGLOH students
From 10 to 14 February 2025, 45 students from member universities of the EUGLOH* European university alliance, including Université Paris-Saclay, took part in a week-long entrepreneurial training programme: Boost Your Entrepreneurial Spirit, at the Lumen, the learning centre of Université Paris-Saclay. Aimed at Master’s students and PhD candidates from the nine member universities of EUGLOH, the programme was coordinated by Bich Liên Doan, former deputy director for research and industrial partnerships at CentraleSupélec - Université Paris-Saclay, the Graduate School for Economics & Management at Université Paris-Saclay and the Institute for Law, Ethics, Heritage (IDEP – Univ. Paris-Saclay), in collaboration with EUGLOH.
Transforming research into a market-ready product
The programme aimed to give students hands-on experience in transforming a research project into a market-ready product. Over five days, participants worked in teams on ten different research projects, focused on health and environmental issues for vulnerable people. The curriculum included workshops on business models, market exploration, and communication strategies, as well as round-table discussions with entrepreneurs who shared insights into the start-up ecosystem and funding strategies. By working in diverse, international teams, the students were able to gain valuable experience in innovation, adaptability, and collaboration.
Immersion in innovation
As part of the programme, students also visited incubators, innovation parks and companies like Servier, where they were able to talk with entrepreneurs and mentors, gaining practical insights into how to turn ideas into successful businesses. Visits to the Paris-Saclay Summit on 12 and 13 February 2025 at the EDF Lab Paris-Saclay, and the French biocluster Génopole also helped the students to broaden their understanding of industry.
“It’s fun, we have met lots of people from different backgrounds. It’s about entrepreneurship, which is something I would really like to learn more about, particularly how to build your own start-up. The visit to incubators was very useful. It gave us clear steps on how to take an idea and turn it into a start-up, making it easier to secure funding,” - Abdulrahman, a PhD candidate from UiT Norway.
Top-level expertise
The programme brought together renowned experts from across Europe, including Pascal Corbel, director of the Graduate School for Economics & Management at Université Paris-Saclay, Kira Gama Rocha from Porto Business School, Filippo Fabbri, lecturer at Université Paris-Saclay, Jan-Frederic Kuhlmann from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
München, Véronique Magnier, professor at the Jean Monnet Faculty at Université Paris-Saclay and Véronique Tibayrenc from the Cachan IUT at Université Paris-Saclay. *The member universities of EUGLOH are: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Germany), Lund University (Sweden), University of Porto (Portugal), University of Szeged (Hungary), University of Alcalá (Spain), Arctic University of Norway (Norway), University of Novi Sad (Serbia), University of Hamburg (Germany) and Université Paris-Saclay.