In today’s world innovation plays a crucial part for organizations striving to resolve critical problems, remain competitive in the market, and contribute to economic growth. Following current trends universities also need to adapt to the constantly changing needs of society and offer innovation-focused study materials to remain relevant. That is why from now on the Faculty of Business of Kaunas University of Applied Sciences will offer a new optional study module called “From Idea to Business” and invites students to learn how to create innovative businesses. The new module will rely on the materials of “Startup Lithuania’s” pre-acceleration course “Startup Guide” which was published last year and is constantly updated. 

“I believe that the partnership between Kaunas University of Applied Sciences and Startup Lithuania and our joint projects will encourage young people to step into the world of business. We do not have any quantitative targets while building this bridge of partnership, the most important thing is not how many new companies will be established. The main goal of the partnership between the organizations is to encourage young people’s interest in new business opportunities, provide them with top quality and up to date information and build up their confidence. Many people before starting their own business question themselves and ask “should I start?”. I truly hope that we will have many more opportunities to work on joint projects in the future and help people find an answer to this question,” said Dalia Ilevičienė, Dean of the Faculty of Business at KUAS.

Combining knowledge and best practices from Kaunas University of Applied Sciences experienced academic staff and the materials from the “Startup Guide” pre-acceleration program will provide students a unique opportunity to study an innovative optional module.

This module will be oriented toward business-minded and innovative young people. It will give them the freedom to create, try and develop their own ideas and present them. The formal goal of the module will be to provide a possibility for students to learn how to generate creative business ideas, or how to improve an existing business idea. Throughout the module, students will also get acquainted with the main elements of marketing, how to present a business idea and will understand business as a holistic system.

Materials in one place

It is important to find ways and methods to attract students and provide them with the most relevant materials which make up the fundamentals of innovative business creation. In this module, students will find many different learning formats and materials that will help them develop.

Rasa Bartkutė, Ph.D., Lecturer of the Faculty of Business at KUAS shared that she became interested in the “Startup Guide” pre-acceleration course with the intention of updating the module when she noticed how easy it is to establish a perfect connection with all the components of the module “Startup Lithuania” pre-acceleration course “Startup Guide” material, topics, and practical tasks. „Here, on one platform, students can search success stories, understand from the information provided here that not only idea as “perfect idea” is important to the market and potential investors. To deep understanding, that really real market needs fresh ideas with a purposeful development and implementation plan, with understanding real costs for developing new business ideas. And the main: how to create a value proposition for customers, society, market”.

With the help of “Startup Lithuania” pre-acceleration course “Startup Guide” students will also learn how to refine the existing idea and to create a value proposition for it, how to choose the right business model, select the markets for which the product is intended. The potential developers will also learn methods to test the product being developed with prospective customers and partners, how to attract investments, and expand the business into other markets.

“We are thrilled to welcome Kaunas University of Applied Sciences as our latest partner. It’s great to see that they decided to rely on our “Startup Guide pre-acceleration course” and create a new study module and teach students how to develop global innovative businesses. Before developing this pre-acceleration course we have noticed that Lithuanian educational institutions devote too little attention and resources to educating young professionals about the development of innovative businesses and how it differs from traditional businesses. We believe that this collaboration and a new study module will encourage people to start and create innovative businesses“ shared Roberta Rudokienė, the Head of the startup ecosystem development unit “Startup Lithuania“ of the Public Institution “Enterprise Lithuania“. 

More information about the “Startup Guide pre-acceleration course” find here.