Abstract:

Linking Great Partners (LGP) is a living lab, providing students with a first-person learning experience of what it means to develop a technological product or create a technology-based company in a multidisciplinary environment.

This living lab was designed to explore contexts that promote learning by innovating, offering its students the ideal environment to develop and practice skills related to innovation and entrepreneurship, such as the ability to mobilise and lead teams, initiative, ethics and sustainable thinking, as well as the ability to deal with uncertainty and risk.
Inspired by agile methods and experimentation, the LGP methodology allows students to apply knowledge and practices of product development and project management in creating technological solutions based on actual needs, which are validated by the market and add value.
Students are organised into multidisciplinary teams (involving elements from the different masters and bachelor’s), 8 to 10 students per team, and then they work as if they were a Startup. Each challenge proposed by an LGP client is assigned to an LGP Startup, which is responsible for developing the project/product proposed, its management, communication, and all the tasks a startup needs.

Students contact customers, partners, and competitors and encounter the complexity and uncertainty inherent to carrying out an innovative project and launching a start-up.
LGP is an experimentation centre that involves academic and non-academic staff from the Faculties of Engineering (FEUP), Economics (FEP) and Fine Arts (FBAUP) of the University of Porto.

These different areas of knowledge enhance the development of pedagogical-scientific activities that promote transversal and multidisciplinary skills in future graduates.

This paper describes the LGP methodology, presents findings and explores future challenges related to entrepreneurship and innovation.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Deeptech.