Poliempreende Project

The Portuguese polytechnic high education network has developed a reference project with an institutional cooperation and entrepreneurship education methodology of development and implementation, for more than 15 years now. The concern of promoting and empowering entrepreneurs as a response to the paradigm shift of “a job for life” gave form to the Poliempreende Project which is a teaching design method, enterprise-oriented, to promote and develop new business projects. The main goal is to present and demonstrate the impact of the Poliempreende project in the students and in their business creation process. In order to do that, the authors will follow a case study methodology to analyse how and why this entrepreneurship education methodology is implemented and how it has achieved success. This will be done by integrating the project within the European entrepreneurship education policies, showing how it addresses and follows the European guidelines for entrepreneurship competencies development, and supports innovation and business projects can be turned into new enterprises in a sustainable way.