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MSc Entrepreneurship students compete for the top prize in the European Innovation Academy accelerator programme.

A number of students were selected to attended the prestigious European Innovation Academy in Turin, Italy as part of a competition bringing over 500 colleagues together from across the globe.

Innovation Academy

The European Innovation Academy is a recognised leader in tech entrepreneurship education. The non-profit, educational programmes are developed through joint partnerships with professionals from the world’s top institutions including Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley, and Google.

The annual summer programme for students is designed to bring together the brightest minds from global universities. This year, Nottingham Business School MSc Entrepreneurship students had the opportunity to take part in the 3 week programme in Italy.

The programme was full of stimulating activities for students to get involved in. In the first week students were tasked with allocating specific roles to each team member based on their strengths. These included responsibility for aspects of business, marketing, software development and designing. The goal was to form multidisciplinary international teams and validate the next 10 billion dollar idea. Second week was developed with partners from Google. The goal for the students is to design and launch the product as well as map go-to-market strategy. The third week was all about acquiring the first 1000 users and pitching to a panel of Silicon Valley VC's. The panel was led by partners from Stanford University.

Student were fully supported by a number of different mentors who helped guide them through the programme. Kostas Galanakis, course leader commented "Our students had the opportunity to participate in the extreme acceleration programme, creating their own venture. They met more than 320 students from across the world with entrepreneurial ambitions. During the programme they recruited their international and multicultural partners to compete for the best venture and present in front of venture capitals and business angels from the Silicon Valley. I am very proud of them as one of our students won the best team award and a second won the best IPR award giving them the seeds to follow their entrepreneurial dreams in the global market."

Chathura Athuluwage, an MSc Entrepreneurship student here at Nottingham Business School, was a member of the team which was selected as the top team in the programme.

Visit our MSc Entrepreneurship course page to find out about additional course activities.