Improving transferable skills in engineering education through a pre-incubation semester

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is a powerful tool for economic growth as it facilitates the creation of new companies and jobs, opens up newmarkets and demonstrates new skills and capabilities. Investing in the promotion of entrepreneurship and education for engineers isone of the best return investments that countries around the world can make. This study describes the experience of a programmefor the pre-incubation of start-ups in a Spanish public university, for the training of entrepreneurs, and how it has influenced theimprovement of their transferable skills. A survey for entrepreneurs was carried out during the 2012/2013 academic year. Theanalysis considered 14 engineering graduates. A questionnaire was conceived to analyse how entrepreneurs perceived the benefit ofthe pre-incubation programme in improving their business management and professional skills, and how their transferable skillsbenefited from the programme. The survey was administered at the beginning and at the end of the programme. The resultsindicate that students’ overall perception of functioning effectively as a member of a team and using methods to communicate withthe engineering community, had significantly improved by the end of the pre-incubation programme. Other transferable skills, suchas management and business practices, should be reinforced with enhancement of the programme. Universities should organize pre-incubation programmes because they serve as experimental platforms for the development and improvement of transferable skills,valued in an economic crisis where entrepreneurship is seen as one of the most attractive solutions for employment.