Training University students on entrepreneurship via virtual platforms: The case of Technical University of Crete

摘要: Entrepreneurship training of students is not at its best in many countries worldwide and in particular in Greece. In recent years significant effort has been devoted for improving such training, both by the Greek state but also by businesses and professors in various Universities. The main reason for this was because it is widely believed that better prepared young people with appropriate training are more eager to start their own business, which can spur economic development. Training should be more than teaching of courses using the traditional lectures–exercises–exams, cycle. Support via simulation and exposition to different scenarios, have proved effective in exposing in exposing students to the entrepreneurial world and in enhancing skills and knowledge.Several business simulation games are available, with many of them online while some of them are for free. However, there are no specific virtual platforms focusing on entrepreneurship. The Technical University of Crete (TUC) has created an Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit (IEU). IEU has pioneered the design and implementation of a virtual environment, which integrates four platforms that altogether aim toward providing training software based on business simulation. In this paper we discuss the necessity for creating such a platform, present platform structure, go into some depth of the many steps involved into running the platforms and analyze platform component capability. There are four platforms available: 1) the first one has two sub-platforms; one which analyzes the ability of the would be entrepreneur to start-up a business, asking questions which make the potential …