We wanted to bring master students to share the presented research on entrepreneurship as they represent both students and business. Applied science is a natural platform to combine research, business and learning.

The “Current Trends in Business and Entrepreneurship”-course was aimed to give Master-students an opportunity to dive into the world of applied research. We wanted to offer the students a chance to learn to analyze new research results within entrepreneurship, to utilize the research information in organizational development and to communicate the new knowledge to the public.

The course in practice

During the course the students familiarized themselves with the conference papers and wrote abstracts. The students were able to choose interesting topics among the research papers and hence expand their knowledge on current topics in entrepreneurship.

Before the conference, the students reflected what makes a good conference presentation and co-created the evaluation criteria for the Best Presentation award together with the conference organizers. On the conference day the students followed all presentations of a chosen track. At the end of the day they were in charge of choosing the best presentation of each of the following tracks; Entrepreneurial ecosystems driving success, The entrepreneurial mindset, Entrepreneurial learning in higher education and Other topics related to entrepreneurship (value co-creation, sharing economy etc).

As a final assignment the students reflected on the knowledge gathered during the course and the conference and chose topics of their own to translate research language into blogs of simpler content. The blogs are under evaluation at Haaga-Helia´s publishing committee and later published for stakeholders to read.

A course format for the future

The instant feedback from students has been extremely positive. Apparently, the experience was inspiring and offered new ideas and learning opportunities regarding both applied research and the theme of entrepreneurship. The course format also offered a flexible way to enhance studies.

However, the best outcome is that the students had a possibility to familiarize themselves with research practices, expand their networks and to participate in the scientific discussion with researches all over the world.

Creating the course was also a learning curve for us lecturers and the specialists participating in the planning and implementation. As applied research is Haaga-Helia´s priority, the course format gives a great opportunity to connect research and learning. The course model is now piloted and ready to use for similar purposes in the future.

Haaga-Helia Business Innovation Conference (HHBIC) is an international forum for researchers, scholars, students and practitioners to share their business-related research, ideas and innovations. HHBIC 2020 took place in November with the focus on “Entrepreneurship for a better future”. The conference takes place every two years.