Abstract:

The present paper shows the development and the results achieved through the programme Business Real Market Testing (onwards, BRMT), a pilot experience developed by the Engineering Faculty of Mondragon University which promotes specifically in Vocational Training the Entrepreneurial Education. This new learning methodology involves teamwork within the whole BRMT project; from the introduction of the research of business opportunity, until the real market testing in a trade fair. Within this process, around fifty Vocational Education students from the Engineering Faculty of Mondragon University developed their business ideas related to build cooperative organisations.

From the kick off the project, ten teams had been working with various creativity techniques in order to find an initial business idea. The results of the creativity sessions gave up a huge amount of ideas, of which after a selection process by a Decision Matrix was chosen the best option. The criteria of the Decision Matrix were economic and technical viability, relation with the Vocational Education branch of knowledge, innovation of the idea and initial money investment. Later on, each team shape their idea in a Business Model Canvas (onwards Canvas). This is a tool for describing, analysing, and designing Business Models (Osterwalder, 2010).

The BRMT project had had consecutive milestones: on one hand, identification of the business ideas and the exploration of market attractiveness. Then, each team presented their achievements to the rest of the teams that were taking part in the BRMT programme. Subsequently the first prototypes of Business Models were built and tested in the internal market (Engineering Faculty of Mondragon University). On the other hand, having the feedback of these first experiments, the last specifications were defined for the final product/service that was exposed in the trade fair.
The goal of the programme BRMT is to give Entrepreneurial Education to the students in Vocational Training by creating a new Business Model and applying all the knowledge in a cooperative organisation. The results are clearly appreciable thanks to the interaction with the real market experience by the contestants.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurial Education, Vocational Training, Business Model Canvas, Business Real Market Testing, Decision Matrix, Trade Fair.