International Forum “Student technology entrepreneurship”, Tomsk Polytechnic University

Any modern university takes on additional roles for development of social and economic environment of the city and the region. Institutes for higher education start understanding the importance of entrepreneurship and innovations development. Entrepreneurial mission is becoming one of the priority goals for most institutes of higher education in Russia.

One of the instruments to achieve this goal is to develop entrepreneurial thinking skills of students. Technological breakthrough is impossible without competent and talented youth. We need specialists who are able to determine the development directions, set up goals and take responsibility for them. They should not only find current scientific possibilities but also be able to provide their practical application in order to meet the needs of consumers, industry and economics.

Moreover, it is becoming more and more important for big companies and corporations to have flexible employees who are ready for risk and able to design new products and innovations and bring them into the market.

Entrepreneurial thinking skills and spirit are becoming necessary competences for engineers and innovators.

The Forum “Student technology entrepreneurship” is a unique platform with ideal environment for efficient interaction between concerned parties in the field of technology entrepreneurship development for students.

The purpose of the Forum is to reveal the best practices of entrepreneurial competences development of the students of technical specializations and to apply them in future in all modern universities.

The forum tasks:

• To consolidate the best practices of technology entrepreneurship development for students;
• To share experience for betterment of existing methodology for entrepreneurial competences development of the students of technical specializations;
• To prepare the list of recommendations for the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation on entrepreneurship education for technical specialization students.

Main participants of the Forum:

• Universities (Russian, Asian and European) – developing of entrepreneurial thinking skills and spirit for students of technical specializations (engineers and innovators).
• Infrastructure – searching for competent specialists for technology and innovation development, commercialization and technology entrepreneurship development generally.
• Corporations – searching for competent specialists for running and developing of internal start-up projects.

The organizers of the Forum:

• Tomsk polytechnic university;
• Tomsk region Administration (on approval).

The partners of the Forum:

• Consortium Linking Universities of Science and Technology for Education and Research (CLUSTER);
• Association for Engineering education of Russia;
• Autonomous non-profit organization «eNano» (RUSNANO group);
• Association “Nonprofit partnership “Promotion of innovative technologies “Business partners

The following events are planned to be held on the Forum:

November, 14^th

• Forum opening event – discussion platform “Student technology entrepreneurship: the role of the university in entrepreneurship competences development”.
• Round table discussions: “The best practices of student technology entrepreneurship development”, “Corporate entrepreneurship: how to train specialists for corporations?”
• 7^th Annual business projects contest “10K: ideas for life” (satellite event).

November, 15^th

• Expert seminar “Developing of the entrepreneurial thinking skills of students of technical specialization during the education process”