1. Introduction

Aalborg University (AAU) was founded in 1974 from a merger of several well-established higher education institutions with roots going back to the late 18th century. With just 3,000 students enrolled initially, AAU grew to approximately 20,000 students. Students can choose from more than 100 study programmes, at bachelor, master and doctorate levels, and can study at three different geographic locations across Denmark.

AAU's three campuses are very different in terms of size, research area and partnerships with industry. The Esbjerg campus is located on the west coast of the Jutland peninsula in southwest Denmark, and is the smallest campus, with approximately 700 students and 110 employees. Teaching and research focuses on energy, chemistry and biotechnology, oil and gas, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electronics and medialogy. The Copenhagen campus- AAU-Cph- hosts approximately 3,300 students and employs 530 staff. The steady increase in research activity, covering a range of areas (including virtual reality, mobile communication, sustainable energy sources, and organisational communications) resulted in an expansion of the Copenhagen AAU campus. The main campus is located in the city of Aalborg, in northern Denmark. With approximately 16,500 students, it is the largest of the three campuses, offering a wide range of study and research programmes.

Teaching and learning at AAU are centred on problem-based and project-organised pedagogies. The "Aalborg model" trains students in independent learning, which is often embedded in the local business community. This means students encounter problems they could experience in real-life. Students learn to identify and analyse problems and to work successfully in teams towards an end result. Most of these learning objectives draw similarities to the requirements of launching a start-up and then developing a business of one’s own. Hence, entrepreneurship is an integral part of AAU's core strategy and elemental to its innovation approach as a knowledge-generating and culture-bearing institution that contributes to technological, economic, social, and cultural innovation.

AAU's entrepreneurship, innovation, and knowledge exchange activities are coordinated by AAU Innovation across the three campuses. Its main unit working on entrepreneurship promotion is SEA (Supporting Entrepreneurship at Aalborg University), which works across all faculties. It was established in 2002 and has 7 non-academic staff. SEA's budget is financed by a third of the AAU main budget and by two-thirds from external sources.

2. Innovative Features

Pathways for Entrepreneurs

The university actively encourages individuals to become entrepreneurial.

• Business start-up education is offered across the curricula and faculties.
• The business start-up education offer is widely communicated, and measures are taken to increase the rate and capacity of take-up.
• The university provides opportunities to experience entrepreneurship.
• The university provides access to business incubation facilities.

3. Achievements

A main goal of Aalborg University (AAU) is to expose all students to the possibilities of starting new ventures. This involves exposing students to commercial activities or for-profit ventures which help instil enterprising characteristics that create value in a broader and more altruistic sense. 

3.1 Gaining the ability to use professional knowledge in value-creating ways

AAU's entrepreneurship activities are directed both at would-be-entrepreneurs, providing targeted support, and at AAU students in general, with the aim of promoting enterprising behaviour in a broader sense. An incentive for students to engage in such activities is that they gain the ability to use their professional knowledge in value-creating ways. The use of social media has been important for promoting this understanding and for raising students' interest. 

SEA offers a range of different activities, including awareness creation events, learning activities "about, for and in" entrepreneurship, provision of incubator facilities, and intensive collaboration and networking with external partner organisations. 

A highlight is WOFIE, an annual interdisciplinary workshop targeted at all AAU master students on idea development, creativity, business development and risk taking which lasts four days. Events are organised simultaneously and streamed between the three campuses. The theme of WOFIE 2017 is Digital Disruption, with a focus on areas affected by the exponential growth of the digital world.

Solutions Camp is a compact learning format, developed at AAU, which exposes students to challenging environments which test student’s determination to persist through tasks which are both difficult and long-lasting. Between 10 and 30 students from different disciplines participate in a seven-hour intensive workshop in a partner company. An innovation challenge which the company wants to solve in the Solution Camp is presented to students. Extensive exposure to work processes in a corporate environment provides the students with valuable learning experiences; for instance, students can witness how creativity in groups and working under time pressure can affect the innovation process. Every semester several Solutions Camps are organised, to which students can sign up on the SEA website. In 2012 the concept was presented to the Danish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Higher Education in a one-day seminar with 30 AAU-students, who demonstrated the idea-generation process. 

All of SEA's activities have been developed in close collaboration with AAU researchers, external stakeholders and students. An important and successfully met objective of AAU's entrepreneurship activities has been to mobilise students (in particular, PhD students) to get engaged in the design of SEA activities. Instrumental to this has been Kickstart AAU, a student-driven organisation for student entrepreneurs at AAU, founded in 2010 from the initiative of students employed by SEA.  Today, the suite of SEA activities reflects students' needs. Kickstart is a crucial element steadily increasing the number of participating students in entrepreneurial schemes. 

3.2 Learning through and from business incubation

AAU's ‘Inkubator’ scheme was first aimed at a small and very dedicated group of students with concrete start-up intentions. However, over time the initiative developed into a more “open innovation scene” type of activity. Students are obliged to make a well thought-through application, but relationship building and the cross-disciplinary origin of ideas and teams are of greater importance. Students are encouraged to intertwine and create partnerships with other students who share mutual interests and are driven by creative impulses. Initiatives within the realm of social entrepreneurship or being personally driven to create added value are as important as commercial start-ups. In this way, the Inkubator tries to instil an entrepreneurial attitude in its students. 

The incubator initiative has close links with on-going research. A core partner is the interdisciplinary research group CREBS- the Centre for Research Excellence in Business Models at AAU. The research link provides useful, practical advice on how to organise incubation and how to monitor and evaluate the impact of services. This also contributes to the review and re-design of AAU's entrepreneurship support offer.

SEA works with non-profit organisation ‘Venture Cup’ to increase entrepreneurship amongst its students. Venture Cup engages business representatives in the organisation of competitions, mentoring, idea development and networking for students across Denmark. People who have an idea but are unsure of how to effectuate its delivery and completion are offered advice and financial support from Venture Cup. 

4. Challenges and lessons learned

A main challenge has been to secure the availability of sufficient financial resources to offer a continuous programme of activities and to decrease dependency on short-term project financing. A core issue is for the university to maintain close contact with the students when developing these activities. A balance needs to be struck between including elements that the university knows are necessary and developing a common understanding with students.  Time is scarce and students have many other relevant commitments to prioritize; if the carrying out and implementation of the activities seem attractive, more students are likely to show up and prioritize the particular event or activity. Making activities as professional and inviting as possible is essential in making students realise that the university is prioritising the delivery of high-standard solutions for students interested in entrepreneurship. 

To this end, the following approach has been successfully taken by SEA: 

• Gather a team of diverse people with complementary skills and competencies (team)
• Use successes as a lever for new ventures(idea)
• Involve and engage academic staff to create joint ownership and joint pride (connections)
• Reduce the distance to management and decision making (institutional backbone)
• Build partnerships to tap into new resources (partnerships)

5. Contacts

Supporting Entrepreneurship at Aalborg University (SEA – a part of AAU Innovation): www.sea.aau.dk

Morten Dahlgaard Andersen, Head of SEA mda@adm.aau.dk

Jakob Stolt, Senior Adviser, jas@adm.aau.dk