Source: President University Website
Entrepreneurship has an important role to support Indonesia’s economy due to its ability to form independent and creative citizens, also draw investors to Indonesia which leads to the increase of national income. In order to support the economic growth in Indonesia, President University participates in efforts to develop the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Indonesia by creating an entrepreneurial atmosphere at the university through the university's business incubator named Setsail Biz-Accel and entrepreneurship courses. President University also took part in the Erasmus+ Capacity Building program in the field of Higher Education entitled Growing Indonesia: A Triangular Approach (GITA) which was initiated by the European Union.
On September 9-13, 2019, Rector of President University Prof. Dr. Jony Oktavian Haryanto and Rendika Nugraha, MBA as members of the GITA team from President University and lecturer in Entrepreneurship courses attended the Partnership Meeting at the Fachhochschule des Mittelstands (FHM) - Campus Bielefeld, Germany. The meeting was also attended by four universities from Europe including the University of Gloucestershire from the UK, Dublin Technological University of the Republic of Ireland, the University of Innsbruck from Austria, and Fachhochschule des Mittelstands (FHM) as the host.
The discussion raised in this meeting was the development of entrepreneurship education in Indonesia, especially in higher education institutions. The meeting also discussed how entrepreneurship education can synergize and work with business practitioners to strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Indonesia in general, especially entrepreneurship which is led by 7 universities in Indonesia as a GITA project partner.
Related to the discussion in this meeting, Rendika explained what universities need to do to achieve synergy and support the entrepreneurial ecosystem in a country. According to him, universities need to develop an entrepreneurship-based curriculum by incorporating values developed from the GITA project. The existence of a business incubator center at the university as a bridge between entrepreneurial knowledge from university and industry, as well as the active role of the university to establish cooperation with industries is important to develop entrepreneurial ecosystems at the university. Furthermore, Rendika revealed that the knowledge gained in this meeting will be very useful for the development of entrepreneurship education that currently has been implemented at President University.
On the same occasion, the seven university partners from Indonesia also met with start-up practitioners from Germany by visiting the entrepreneurship ecosystem development center in the city of Bielefeld, the Founders Foundation (https://foundersfoundation.de) and the Pioneers Club (https://pioneers.club).
From the visit to the city of Bielefeld, Rendika observed that startups in Bielefeld are developing their business towards Business to Business (B2B) model more than Business to Consumer (B2C) model. "In my opinion, compared to Indonesia, we should pay more attention at the larger market potential in terms of population and also think more about problems that could be turned into business opportunities for students in Indonesia," he said.
In addition, this meeting is a continuation of a series of activities in which President University received a grant from the European Union in the form of supporting facilities to develop Setsail Biz-Accel as a business incubator center at the university. (CA/SL)
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