AlmaEClub. The community of teachers and researchers
The Club
Our objective? The project continues
AlmaEClub is a multi-disciplinary club of teachers, fellow researchers, and PhD students at the University of Bologna that encourages exchanges, learning, and project activities centred around academic entrepreneurship.
It organises meetings, workshops, and all the other activities in different University venues, are occasions for reflection and to define policies to help create new enterprises from research (academic spin-offs) and bring value to students’ ideas and projects (academic start-ups). A commitment that adds value to academic knowledge within society, making research results (including patents, licences, contracts with third parties) available on the market and fostering collaboration and consultations with businesses.
Training, discussion and the generation of ideas
The meetings are divided into:
Learning: to provide the basics of entrepreneurship, targeted to anyone curious about the essential facts and principles and interested in learning more about some of the specifics.
Inspiration: to share stories, experiences, best practice. Includes interventions from speakers of national and international renown on topics such as academic, student, and private entrepreneurship, funding, enterprise acceleration, active and successful start-ups and spin-offs.
Think Tank: the stage in which teachers actively contribute to the creation of new projects in the 4 work areas.
Work Areas
Each work area has its coordinators who organise the project activities. In some cases, a committee nominated by the coordinators oversees the project. The work of coordinators and committees is institutionally recognised, and they represent their work area within the academic institution and in public occasions.
Objective: carry out a feasibility study to obtain Proof Of Concept (POC)/pre-seed funding, i.e. financial instruments devoted to initial development and maturation stages of business projects. The work is essential considering the limited availability of funding for embryonic, therefore high-risk, business projects.
Actions and Timelines: Identification of three models, analysis and comparative assessment, feasibility study on the selected model based on the University’s interests. Definition of the processes to financially facilitate and support the development of business ideas, in synergy with Work Area#3 - Training.
Work Area#2 - Alumni and Entrepreneurial Cross-Contamination
Objectives: Identify the alumni and their entrepreneurial activities. Analyse the methods to establish a mutually beneficial relationship with the alumni. Identify best practices based on existing alumni clubs worldwide, defining their activities and the services they offer.
Actions and Timelines: Quantitative mapping of the alumni to identify any business they have founded or in which they participate or have managerial positions. Qualitative analysis and activation of focus groups. Mapping of existing alumni clubs.
Work Progress: All three lines of work have started and are ongoing.
Completion: Presentation of a report on Alumni and Entrepreneurship
Work Area#3 - Interdisciplinary training to develop an entrepreneurial mindset
Objectives: stimulate the development of an entrepreneurial mindset in students and teachers, taking advantage of multidisciplinary and international environments sensitive to disability and gender and ethnic differences; identify innovative strategies to promote entrepreneurial development.
Actions and Timelines: activities have different levels of complexity depending on initial competencies and targets; they are designed for management as well as for less entrepreneurial-minded sectors. Existing training programmes will be improved and possibly enriched with innovative topics and methods.
Work Area#4 - Structures for the relations with the entrepreneurial eco-system
Objectives: systematically develop projects involving structures and services dedicated to relations with businesses and in support of the creation of new innovative enterprises, to increment the positive impact on research, teaching, and internships/dissertations in companies, adding value and promoting the University's reputation, identifying some of the best case histories published online and on hard copy promotional materials (University company profile).
Actions and Timelines: analyse enterprises and their recruitment processes (knowledge mapping, internal resources and processes dedicated to interactions with culture, industries, and creativity, with particular attention to simplification and intellectual property and economic exploitation); communication of competencies, internally and externally (valorization and narrative of the best case histories and the publication – in the University company profile and online – of partner brands with which the University collaborates.
