Proakatemia and Y-Campus: Focus on Entrepreneurship

Last week we visited two TAMK's initiatives very successful related with entrepreneurship. Proakatemia is a Business college totally focused on providing support to create entrepreneurs, or at least developing enough skills to their students acquire a entrepreneurs behavior along theirs careers. The students attend some subjects in the first year and from the second year forward the students are divided in groups of 20, working as partners in a real company.

Although the students have different preferences and skills, they must conduct their companies in all areas: financial, marketing, CRM, planning, etc. Regarding the course methodology, students necessarily will act like different business roles in some projects and they'll able to face specific situations they'll experience in their workplaces after University.

In Proakatemia, the students' timetable are split in training sessions, planning meetings, coaching sessions, projects' working, and others. The most part of the student's time is filled out with issues of their companies, they usually have prospected some projects at the same time (for each project there is a manager). I've realized the groups (companies) have the tendency to increase competition about profits, clients, prestige over time. At the same time, as the companies really exist, the students are constantly encouraged to behave professionally and try to overcome day by day struggles, with the advantage of being supported by experienced coaches.

Proakatemia infrastructure is incredible. The building is very cozy and vibrant, it is divided in some inspirational rooms, unlike traditional classrooms. The students and coaches have the freedom to move around the broad space depending of their necessities: meeting rooms, cafeteria, offices, training rooms, working environments, etc. It is a dynamic place when everyone has the opportunity for matching contacts, flourishing creativity, acquiring knowledge and developing competences.

During the course, the companies are not registered to an specific purpose, which makes it possible for the them offers any service or sells any product, providing to students learn by doing. Even though the learning process involved, the students have taken the companies very seriously and they have tried earning much money as they are able to. Prospecting new clients is a responsibility of the students, although in some situations clients request Proakatemia for an indication and Proakatemia has tried matching a company and that demand.

Proakatemia has been a successful for more them one decade, but it has reached a small group, 40 persons per year. Based on Proakatemia goals, TAMK created a widely entrepreneurship program, called Y-Campus. It is a multi-purpose space that uses learning by doing approach to teach entrepreneurship for students from different areas in multidisciplinary projects. Y-Campus focus also in partnership for companies, consulting and training, research and development, recruit students. Every TAMK students can attend a Y-campus course or be oriented by a coach in a specific idea or company.