ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITY AS A TRANSVERSE AND PROFESSIONALIZING COMPETENCE AMONG TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING STUDENTS

The current economic recession being experienced by the major European economies has highlighted the importance of entrepreneurship as a possible solution to this adverse situation. From the field of knowledge and in particular from the University, is necessary to prepare study plans with a greater weight of transverse knowledge and skills useful for the workplace and professional. Only then university graduates will get better insertion in the labor market. This paper presents the experiences of the Economics and Business Administration Department from the University of Alcala with Telecommunications and Electronic Engineering and Industrial grade students in teaching activities developed throughout the course, designed to introduce students in business concepts and especially encourage entrepreneurship, giving students the tools and sources of information necessary for the implementation of their own projects and business innovation.

Given the profile of engineering student with little business and legislative notions, all activities that have been developed are intended to facilitate their learning in business plan development, focusing on the process difficulties but also on the advantages and benefits of undertaking a business initiative. The knowledge and skills that are transmitted are an interdisciplinary and complementary integration, given the dimensions that entrepreneurship concept embraces, such as accounting, finance, human resource selection, environmental analysis or design business strategy. However, the ultimate goal of all activities is the acquisition of strategies that stimulate student effort and promote their ability to learn by oneself.

To achieve the above objectives, students must develop a business plan that loops through all the steps needed to create a company and all the business basic functions, from production to promotion of goods or services. They must orally present the business plan relying on all the resources they require, such as web pages creation, recording digital media advertisements or business dramatization. The assessment of all activities usefulness has been collected through a questionnaire to more than 250 engineering students.

Finally an Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is carried out with the results obtained of conduct the same study on a sample of social sciences students who are more familiar with this type knowledge and skills. The hypothesis to be tested is that this type of work is best rated and provides a greater knowledge to engineering students.