Enterprise
The Business Start-Up Journey- Azerbaijan/UK
This project is funded by British Council's Creative Spark Partnership Fund's Creative Spark: Higher Education Enterprise Programme. Creative Spark: Higher Education Enterprise Programme is a five-year initiative to support international university and institutional partnerships to develop enterprise skills and creative economy across seven countries in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan), South Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia) and Ukraine through UK support.
ABOUT PROJECT
Implementation of the “Creating Enterprise: The Business Start-up Journey- Azerbaijan/UK” project started on September 2019. After the first year of the project, an international team led by University of Kent (UK) and ADA University and Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Arts (Azerbaijan) won the right to continue work on the project for the second consecutive year.
The purpose of the project is to:
Expand and foster enterprise knowledge and practice exchange between UK and Azerbaijani HEIs
Improve entrepreneurial literacy among students and creative entrepreneurs of ASUCA and ADA
Improve soft skills in students
Enhance capacity of academic staff in the creative industries:
Develop creative start-up projects
As a result of this collaboration the project and the resulting platform will seek to improve the low rate of entrepreneurial education among Azerbaijani students studying in creative fields.
The first year of the project has been finalized on May 2020, with finalization of the 8 weeks long Creating Enterprise: The Business Start-Up Journey Entrepreneurship Skills Course organized by ADA University in partnership with University of Kent Business School (UK).
The Course has brought together group of selected students with different background ranging from IT and Business studies to Arts and Cultural studies for an engaging journey within which have been enhanced their entrepreneurial competencies and skills and provided step-by-step guidance for a start-up project development. Even the implemented quarantine regime did not stop the flow of the course and thanks to both participants and instructors, the course has moved to an online learning platform.
On May 30, an online pitching competition has been conducted and the winning three teams selected and awarded with seed funding! Winning projects and teams:
1st place: Study Fun
Team: Maryam Hasanova, ADA University, and Laman Hamidova, Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Arts About project: An app where people can monitor their productivity for a certain time. One can study various subjects both by himself and with friends or even with different people from all over the world, who are studying the same subject.
2nd place: SPARK
Team: Susan Hasanova, ADA University
About project: Website for companies, like all companies have data about their departments and their staff, all the promotions, trainings, etc. The idea is to facilitate the hiring process for company and the process of exploring job for unemployed people.
3rd place: ArExpr
Team: Jigme Tashi Namgyal, ADA University, Lawrence Joshua Flomo, ADA University and Elbey Mirgasimov, Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Arts
About project: A learning app that turns learning into a game, with achievements, colourful characters, and AR.