By Sille Sinor and Tuuli-Emily Liivat

1. Introduction

In January 2023, our team SYNTRE was given an innovation challenge to develop a community within the ESBD programme at the University of Technology in Brno, Czech Republic. 

Our innovation challenge culminated with a team of 5 people from SYNTRE and Flyyna joining the innovation week in Brno, where our team had the responsibility of a Finnovation Day introducing Finnish culture and education as well as projects in Tampere region. The organisers also participated in the local 24 hour challenge as judges. 

The experience of staying in another cultural space was eye opening to say the least. In addition to us successfully organising the Finnovation Day and judging the 24 hour challenge, we learnt a lot about the programme, the customs and the way of life in Czech Republic.

This essay aims to reflect on the learnings and observe the two programmes, Proakatemia’s English programme and ESBD with our experience of the Finnovation Day, our interaction with the students and outside sources. 

2. Way of Learning and Learning Modules. 

2.1 What is ESBD?  

ESBD is an abbreviation for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development, which is a bachelor-level study programme that is taught at the Brno University of Technology (BUT) in the Czech Republic. The programme’s study language is English. The programme was established in autumn of 2019 and the head of the programme is Robert Zich, who has been leading the program for the last five years in the university. From his education, Robert is a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Business Administration and Management. 

The ESBD study programme takes 3 years and is a full-time study. It has a tuition fee of 1730 EUR per academic year for EU students and for non-EU students, the academic year costs 9200 EUR per academic year. 

The programme consists of four topics that the students will specialize more in detail through various practical practices and university courses. The structure of the studies is made in a way that the program courses are divided into four groups: entrepreneurship, market strategy, management and economics of company, and Final Thesis, 

Part of the practical studies in this programme is that the students accomplish a student company together with their classmates. They operate as a company and practice entrepreneurship based on their own interest. Dialogue and learning are practiced in workshops that take place for the whole part of a student’s studies. Students also take part in different competitions regarding innovation and business. 

This is how the program is described on the official websites of the BUT.

2.2. ESBD programme based on students

In the words of the students, the programme is more practical and a mix of dialogue and normal university. They have university courses on a daily basis from morning to afternoon and after courses they continue the day with a workshop with their teammates to the evening depending on the schedule they have for the semester. Apparently, the days are usually very long for the students as they were talking about it. From Monday to Thursday, they follow their university courses, classes, and workshops, but Fridays are left free from those subjects. This “free day” from studies students are able to fill with entrepreneurial activities like projects or how they please. The weeks can also differ a lot since there might be something going on in their faculty to support their studies that they are expected to take part in. In the student’s description of the program, it makes the picture of the program more complex. 

The students who were interviewed for this were the students present in the ESBD programs in 2023 fall.

2.3 Proakatemia officially

Proakatemia offers a bachelor-level study programme titled Entrepreneurship and Team Leadership in Tampere University of Applied Sciences in Finland. The programme was established in 1999, offers education in both English and Finnish and the programme lasts for three and a half years. There is no tuition fee for EU students, however, for non-EU students the tuition fee is 9800 EUR. 

The structure of studies includes Basic and Professional Studies, Free-Choice Studies, International Practical Training and Bachelor’s Thesis. According to Opintopolku, the BBA in Entrepreneurship and Team Leadership is excellent for undergraduates interested to continue in marketing, sales, export-import operations, financial management, product management, project management and customer relations as well as various other fields. 

2.4. Entrepreneurship and Team Leadership programme based on students
In the words of the teampreneurs, the programme is a great embodiment of “with great power comes great responsibility.” The programme is heavily project-based as opposed to other programmes, which teaches a lot. The students are expected to learn self-management and through those skills, develop their learnings and create entrepreneurial ventures through team learning. While the programme allows a lot of free time, the freedom should be allocated to team bonding, learning through a combination of literature and experiences and completing projects. The days are largely up for the team to decide and can be as long as you make them. 

3. Comparing of the Communities. 

Both of these study programs have communities as a community means feeling and a set of relationships among people, where they trust each other and meet common needs. Individuals can influence each other and their surroundings in their communities. In strong communities the feeling of belonging and trust is big among the people, they also meet common needs and have goals to move forward together. The history and experiences the people go through together also build the feeling of belonging bigger and stronger. (Chavis & Lee 2015)

3.1. Proakatemia community

The Proakatemia community consists of around 300 students, 11 team companies and 15 team coaches present at the Proakatemia premises in TAMK. Due to the program’s long history, the community also features the alumni society of Proakatemia, Proakatemian Ystävät ry,  meaning the students who have graduated from the program over 24 years and also the staff who have worked over the years in the Proakatemia program. 

It is hard to estimate how big the community is since the feeling of belonging to it matters the most and if you have already graduated the feeling can fade, which is why belonging may be  hard to estimate. Because of the rapid growth of the community in size, the community isn’t as strong as it has been since the ideal size has passed. Dunbar’s number suggests that humans are only capable of maintaining 150 connections at once, therefore, having over 150 people in the community can be seen as not ideal as the individuals are not able to recognise everyone in the community. However, this does not regulate that there shouldn’t be that big of communities as if the culture and trust are present the communities can be the drivers to success (IRT 2023, Future 2022).

The community of Proakatemia has gone through many difficulties and changes together over the years. It started as a small new study line of business that was still finding its way of working and coping with only a few people inside the program. Over the last 24 years, Proakatemia has managed to massively expand its size today. Additionally, the inclusion of the English programme, changing the community to two languages and growing it even more in size by opening a new market for international students to apply to has contributed to the expansion by a great amount.

The key elements that have enabled the big community of people to be aligned to a shared vision have been thanks to the principles that have been created by the students and the values that get introduced at the beginning of the studies. The values represent the community there is and welcome the new members to be a part of it. Proakatemia’s values are Trust, Courage, Doing, Learning, and Success. The first value of trust should be emphasized above others as that is the value that enables the fast adaption of individuals into the community as in a community, the individual needs to feel trusted and have the courage to trust its members. Proakatemia has nailed that part since they promote that everyone who enters the community is going to be trusted as they have a very trustful community and it is the individual’s job to upkeep the trust that they have given. (IRT 2023, Chavis & Lee 2015)

Not all communities need structure or roles but in Proakatemia there are set roles and systems to ensure success and that students take responsibility to lead the community. The roles and systems aren’t too strict and modifications can be done based on the needs of students in the community. The structures and roles add value to the community and are therefore considered important parts of the community. These structures and roles are for example the role of community leader, the board of Proakatemia, janitor team, Proakatemia day, and Mavi team. The roles and structures maintain community and bring value to the community in different ways as they can create opportunities inside the community, they support networking inside and outside, and they support continuous learning. (IRT 2023, Seppä & Halonen 2020)

In Proakatemia the community aspect is very highlighted to be important and key to success, as in a community lies a lot of power and opportunities. Individuals in the programme feel the importance of the community and gratitude to be part of it and put effort into building it stronger and better. Part of it can be because individuals can learn from each other and benefit from each other’s knowledge and networks across ages, as in Proakatemia, the age difference is big as you have students aged 18 and students aged over 30. (Seppä & Halonen 2020)

3.2. ESBD community

ESBD community consists of around 3 coaches and 3 student companies, so around 50 people are present on the campus all together. The program has two student companies that graduated from the program and they are also considered part of the community. It is a rather small community if you compare it to the current Proakatemia community, but it shouldn’t be compared as both of the programs are at different levels of experience (Seppä & Halonen 2020, BUT 2023). 

In the ESBD community, community work and development have not been an important aspect for the students based on Seppä’s thesis in 2020. In the thesis, the interviews and the surveys indicated that the community aspect was still blurry for the students and they didn’t seem to see the gains of networking with each other, since they were not able to see the benefits of getting to know people outside of their teams. (Seppä & Halonen 2020)

While visiting the ESBD programme in November 2023 the following aspects were visible from the community aspect. The students knew each other, were connecting/networking with people outside their own teams, and were excited to act together meaning that the third and second-year students were building relationships with the first-year students and also showing signs of trust in each other. They were also having fun with each other and they were comfortable joking with each other, which promotes trust and creates memories. 

The community aspect can still seem blurry to the students and the need for structure and ownership is still not as present as it could be. But over the years and hopefully, when they can grow even more the amount of students in the program the community would be more led by students and have more structure to it, to support the values and feeling of community.

4. Discussion: Comparing ESBD and Proakatemia.

The discussion on the comparison of the two programmes was very interesting to think of since despite our differences in the age of the programme, similar themes to develop can be suggested to both programmes. Both programmes can be said to be facing a critical point of development, where it is necessary to nurture the culture of the community.

Even though the community at ESBD has become more tight-knit and familiar over the five years, further focus on structure and events on the community level should be provided in collaboration with the student body. As with every new programme, the students at ESBD said they could feel that they were not as relevant yet within their campus but that seeing their community grow restores and creates pride of their programme. Currently due to the nature of the ESBD study programme, the students have pressure to in addition to their projects, also complete their university courses and work hard alongside their studies to be able to afford tuition and basic needs, which means that while the students try their best to create community and strengthen the sense of ownership of the community among students, they simply lack energy and focus due to the external factors. This means that the leader of the programme is easily seen as the leader of the community, who is the professor and ownership of the community is not taken as easily. This also suggests that the students see the leader of the community as someone who is above them and not their equal, which could affect the students’ agreement with the vision. Luckily, Robert is working on the problem by giving more responsibility to the students to do as they wish and by taking them along to visit other programs similar to theirs like Proakatemia. Roberts’s initiative has also started the Finnovation Day and the festival that he sees and hopes to become a tradition in the future between the two – or more –  schools and study programs. The authors of the essay discussed that the critical point in the community is taking ownership, creating, and marketing the success stories. A stronger inclusion of the alumni could also be a method to instill external motivation in the current students of ESBD.

In Proakatemia, the above-mentioned rapid expansion of the community also presents its blessings and challenges. As mentioned above, over the course of the last three years, the community has grown to be twice its size, which has made the community more dispersed. This in turn allows us to witness a similar sense of disconnection and lack of ownership in the community than seen previously. In order to strengthen the sense of community, a new system by the name of Konttori/Offices is piloted, where the community across all studies is divided into four to bring different teams across years and education languages closer. This has been off to a rather slow start, but is expected to accelerate in the upcoming semester as the study programme’s flagship event Sales Days will now be more focused on the Office system and the yearly calendar of events is emptied through a common belief that Offices will come together to create events strengthening the community spirit on their own. 

Community and the feeling of belonging can also be noted through the external factors around us that we can influence to some extent. An example of this are the physical spaces of the two programmes. In Proakatemia, each team has a dedicated space with a table and storage to utilize and decorate to their tastes. This lights up the rooms with a touch of personality – teams can showcase their achievements, fragments of projects and many other things. Recently, teams were also invited to decorate some of the rooms to the way they see fit best. In ESBD, the space they have has been decorated by community paintings in communal spaces, which was very inspiring and cozy to see as the style of the paintings emphasized that students indeed inhabited the space. Both of the communities could learn from each other: it would be lovely to see more of the community’s success stories in the forms of projects in ESBD and in turn, more teams contributing their art to the communal meeting spaces in Proakatemia. 

Another aspect to consider is the external factors on a macro scale that are more difficult to influence. Such is the case with the larger nationwide stereotypes and culture towards entrepreneurship as a whole. In Finland, the view towards entrepreneurship and start-ups in general is much more acceptable than it is in the Czech Republic. In the interviews with the students, it appeared that the local start-up ecosystems could be a lot better and entrepreneurship continues to be something that is perceived to be difficult to achieve due to the thresholds set by the government in order to create your own company. Even then, the locals share a mindset of entrepreneurial ventures being something that is connected with unequal pay and deceit, which is an aged stereotype. Another detail of great importance is that in Finland, we have a well-working concept of light entrepreneurship, which distinctively lowers the threshold of entering markets as an entrepreneur from the surface and in turn, positively affects the society’s outlook towards entrepreneurship. 

5. Conclusion and Future Collaborations

Analyzing two similar, innovative and entrepreneurial programs that Proakatemia and ESBD have, the community was highlighted and overviewed as the importance of it is significant. In both of these programs, the external aspect of cultural differences and cultural attitudes and possibilities regarding entrepreneurship affect the students of the programs as well. 

In its five years of existence, ESBD has already demonstrated progress on the community level and has been able to create more culture, but the challenges are still present there and persistent. Therefore, the programme leader Robert Zich must create ways of involving students in creating the culture by themselves through delegation of responsibilities to bring ownership to the community, bringing the community together and having a culture to ensure the success of the programme. In Proakatemia, the aspect of culture and community has been created over the past 24 years and has strong traditions and structure that creates value. The Finnovation is already a good start on creating culture and Robert’s way of empowering students to take more lead and responsibility as well as learn from the examples of Proakatemia is cathartic. 

While it may seem through the comparison of the two programs that Proakatemia is in the stand of being the leader of an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset program, its community has been and is facing challenges from the rapid growth over the past few years. The structure is going through a change by having konttori/office system being piloted for the first time this autumn in the hope of tackling the problem of having a large number of people in the whole community connect with each other. It is supposed to bring the students together by offering a smaller amount of people to build relationships with. Furthermore, one of the key learnings is that while the programmes are similar, one programme cannot be copy-pasted 100% and external factors such as the local culture and acceptance must be taken into account. The cultures should also be allowed fluidity to evolve over time to best fit the needs of the students. 

Conclusively, it was very inspiring and eye-opening to be in a different culture but follow and contribute to the community during the week that we spent in Brno. It was an experience that taught us a lot about teamwork, event production, problem-solving, and collaboration across cultures. Furthermore, the project team was able to learn together and bring the learnings back. It was uplifting to see ESBD’s community strive and recognize the privileges both programs have. We are very excited to continue the collaboration with ESBD next year when they will be visiting Proakatemia. 

Sources:

BUT. 2023. Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development. Published in the Brno University of Technology official websites. Read 3.12.2023.

David M. Chavis & Kien Lee. May 12, 2015. What Is Community Anyway? Published in Stanford Social Innovation Review. Read 4.12.2023.

BUT. 2023. Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development – Study Program. Published in the Brno University of Technology official websites. Read 3.12.2023.

International Relationship Team (IRT) of Proakatemia. 2023. Presentation of Proakatemia. Powerpoint. Read 3.12.2023.

Future. 2022. Dunbar’s number: Why we can only maintain 150 relationships. Published in BBC. Read 5.12.2023.

Lassi Seppä & Joonatan Halonen. October 2020. The Usage of Team Learning Methods – The Comparison between Proakatemia and ESBD. Thesis. Read 4.12.2023.

TAMK. 2023. Entrepreneurship and Team Leadership. https://www.tuni.fi/en/study-with-us/entrepreneurship-and-team-leadership

TAMK. 2023. Study Guide – Bachelor’s Degree Programme in Entrepreneurship and Team Leadership.’https://opinto-opas-ops.tamk.fi/167/en/37/193914?lang=en 

Opintopolku. 2023. Introduction of the Bachelor’s Degree Programme in Entrepreneurship and Team Leadership. https://opintopolku.fi/konfo/en/toteutus/1.2.246.562.17.00000000000000001588