Entrepreneurship education can increase student’s entrepreneurial skills and intention; and entrepreneurship activities stimulate economic growth. Therefore, the number of entrepreneurship courses is increasing, but they are often offered to students from a specific field of study and/or to only one educational level, even though multidisciplinarity is important for entrepreneurship. This study has carried out an exploratory single case study on an entrepreneurial programme in a multidisciplinary environment, that is, the Contamination Lab of Turin (CLabTo). Moreover, pre- and post-surveys have also been conducted in order to perform some qualitative analyses. The results show the importance of creating teams with different competencies, cognitive and decision-making skills. Moreover, we explain how design-thinking is useful in entrepreneurship education and that a challenge-based entrepreneurship course leads to cooperation with external actors in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. It is also explained what the obstacles and opportunities of these programmes are and how to improve them. Moreover, on the basis of pre- and post-surveys, our qualitative analyses show that the students’ overall perception of their abilities to work in a multidisciplinary team, their entrepreneurial skills and entrepreneurial intentions increased slightly. In short, this work is aimed at increasing the importance of entrepreneurship education in a multidisciplinary environment and the use of practical-oriented teaching models.

Purpose: Entrepreneurship Education (EE) is increasing throughout the world. In 2012, the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) financed Contamination Labs (CLabs), which are laboratories that are aimed at developing entrepreneurial mindsets in all university students. This study analyses the entrepreneurial learning process mechanisms adopted in these CLabs.Design/methodology/approach: An ethnographic case study was performed in two Italian CLabs from October 2017 to December 2019.Findings: Findings demonstrate that the CLabs in Italy are promising Entrepreneurship Education Centres which create programmes to develop an entrepreneurial mindset in students with different educational backgrounds and levels. Interdisciplinarity in the composition of the student teams, virtuous contamination of knowledge and experience between the students and the stakeholders from the entrepreneurial ecosystem are the key pillars to foster an entrepreneurial mindset in all the students.Research limitations/implications: The limitations of this work regard the need to expand the analysis to all the other CLabs created in Italian universities.Practical implications: The findings provide indications that may be used to guide a university faculty in the design and management of Entrepreneurship Education Centres in collaboration with entrepreneurs, corporations, student clubs, incubators and representatives of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. Moreover, the results point out a need to develop interdisciplinary entrepreneurial programmes.Originality/value: The originality resides in the analysis of a novel type of Entrepreneurship Education Centre in Italian Universities created as the result of an ad-hoc Italian policy.

Although a great deal of attention has been paid to entrepreneurship education, only a few studies have analysed the impact of extra-curricular entrepreneurial activities on students’ entrepreneurial intention. The aim of this study is to fill this gap by exploring the role played by Student-Led Entrepreneurial Organizations (SLEOs) in shaping the entrepreneurial intention of their members. The analysis is based on a survey that was conducted in 2016 by one of the largest SLEOs in the world: the Junior Enterprises Europe (JEE). The main result of the empirical analysis is that the more time students spent on JEE and the higher the number of events students attended, the greater their entrepreneurial intention was. It has been found that other important drivers also increase students’ entrepreneurial intention, that is, the Science and Technology field of study and the knowledge of more than two foreign languages. These results confirm that SLEOs are able to foster students’ entrepreneurial intention. The findings provide several theoretical, practical and public policy implications. SLEOs are encouraged to enhance their visibility and lobbying potential in order to be recognized more as drivers of student entrepreneurship. In addition, it is advisable for universities and policy makers to support SLEOs by fostering their interactions with other actors operating in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, who promote entrepreneurship and technology transfer activities. Lastly, this paper advises policy makers to assist SLEOs’ activities inside and outside the university context.

Student entrepreneurship is becoming more relevant for universities throughout the world. Therefore, it is important to analyze the strategies and mechanisms adopted by universities to support student entrepreneurship. In this article, we analyze the mechanisms used by universities to promote student entrepreneurship through University Business Idea Incubators as part of their Third Mission. University Business Idea Incubators can act as preincubators or preaccelerators that are designed to help a growing number of university students from different backgrounds interact and develop their entrepreneurial ideas in a safe and creative environment. In such a context, we performed a cross-case study methodology on a national program that is aimed at creating Italian University Business Idea Incubators. As a result, we have identified the five key features and 12 strategies adopted by University Business Idea Incubators to cultivate student entrepreneurship. The article also presents some examples of successful business ideas developed by students as a result of their participation in University Business Idea Incubators. The obtained results also demonstrate how University Business Idea Incubators foster intellectual capital to sustain the development of an entrepreneurial mindset and competences, with the objective of favoring both the creation of concrete new ideas and of offering new challenge-based learning approaches to university students. We also offer some ideas that could be incorporated in educational policies to support university student entrepreneurship.