HOPE: the Holland Program on Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is a key driver of economic growth in the Netherlands. HOPE realizes that today’s students will be tomorrow’s entrepreneurs: driving innovation, creating wealth and jobs, transforming communities and generating greater global competitiveness.

Cooperation between universities to create entrepreneurship

HOPE is a unique and innovative initiative of the three universities in the province of South Holland: Leiden University, Delft University and Erasmus University Rotterdam. More than 50,000 students at these universities follow around 100 Bachelor’s and almost 300 Master’s programmes, encompassing the complete range of academic disciplines. These leading universities include some of the most highly regarded centres of excellence for technology, management, science and economics education in Europe.
HOPE’s central objective is to stimulate the entrepreneurial culture at the partner universities. Students and academic staff will increasingly focus on the exploitation of their individual and collective knowledge and expertise, either in start-ups or in larger organisations. HOPE is integrating and anchoring entrepreneurship in the curricula of the universities, expanding and renewing existing programmes with challenging content and activities and developing and introducing new ones. It is also instigating new ways of working and innovative learning environments to nourish and inspire entrepreneurship.

Investing 8 million

The universities realise that stimulating entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behaviour calls for a wider partnership; one that goes beyond their own collaboration. Together with the Ministry of Economic Affairs, through the Leren Ondernemen initiative, and corporate partners including ABN AMRO, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, the three universities are investing €8 million over the coming four years to strengthen and expand education in entrepreneurship.
The students of today will be the entrepreneurs of the future, but it is today’s companies that are already putting entrepreneurship into practice. The ultimate success of HOPE depends on, and will be greatly enhanced by, the active contribution of the business world. Leveraging the experience and expertise of today’s entrepreneurs will enable academic staff to introduce students to ever more challenging educational activities. It will help students to develop the insight to identify business opportunities and the skills to take advantage of them.
Entrepreneurship is a key driver of economic growth in the Netherlands. Our need to develop as a leading modern knowledge economy means it is more vital today than ever. Today’s students will be tomorrow’s entrepreneurs – driving innovation, creating wealth and jobs, transforming communities and generating greater global competitiveness.

What HOPE means for students

• Unique and innovative Bachelor’s and Master’s courses in entrepreneurship.
• Diverse activities on and outside the campus that will give you first hand experience of entrepreneurship and what it involves.
• New learning environments, such as entrepreneurship labs and pre-incubation facilities.
• A wide range of training courses, internships and thesis assignments.
• Advice and support in starting up your own company.

What HOPE means for academic staff

• Support in integrating entrepreneurship in your teaching programme.
• Teaching method best practices, specially developed teaching material and facilities from HOPE research.
• Assistance in the area of knowledge valorisation.
• Linking you and your colleagues with the business world.

What HOPE means for your company

• Access to the universities’ international networks and collaboration with other corporate partners.
• New insights from research via internships and projects led by university experts.
• Workshops and expertise sessions at your company, led by the universities’ professors and lecturers.
• Access to the most promising entrepreneurial students at an early stage in their studies.

How your company can take part in HOPE

Raising awareness
• Speaking on entrepreneurship at founders’ day celebrations, graduation days and other events.
• Establishing or sponsoring new entrepreneurship events, competitions and awards.
• Participating in HOPE research on entrepreneurial best practices.
• Giving guest lecturers and making case studies available.
Facilitating experience
• Offering students practical experience through internships.
• Making facilities available for thesis projects involving entrepreneurial topics.
• Participating in master classes and workshops.
Building Competences
• Making experts available to contribute to specialised and more advanced courses.
• Providing facilities and case studies for students working on international projects.
• Mentoring and coaching students.
Putting entrepreneurship into action
• Collaborating with incubators and entrepreneurship labs.
• Providing network and information facilities.
• Making seed funding available for projects.
• Becoming a prospective employer.

For more information or to discuss the above and other ways your company could contribute to and benefit from the HOPE initiative, please contact Harmen Jousma.
More information about HOPE Entrepreneurship can be found on the HOPE website.
Interested in science and business-based education? Check out the SBB Programme on our website for the science and research-based courses at Leiden University.
Source http://science.leidenuniv.nl/index.php/sbb/hope/