Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurial capacity is a fundamental value of the Holistic Education Model designed by J Alberto Moyano, and constitutes three main principles as follows 1) It is expected that graduates must have learned the maximum scientific information about their field (with an inter and transdisciplinary perspective) 2) developed critical capacity and creative scientific thinking 3) decision making and creative daring.

To learn. It is understood by learning the ability of the individual to acquire knowledge. Through the process of learning, students adopt individual and collective behaviors to achieve a superior capacity to formulate problems and evaluate and select the best theories and procedures to solve them. More than memorizing nonsense recitation, in the style of banking education (Freire, 1970), it is the ability to obtain, manage, and use appropriate information to solve problems.

Given the increasing specialization of the professions and the increasing complexity of the planet’s problems, with a multitude of interrelated facets of intracomponents and intercomponents, which cannot be solved from a single professional perspective but from various disciplines, the optimal professional must approach problems from several scientific angles. Therefore, inter and transdisciplinary science must play a role in the approach of solutions presented by future professionals. Collaboration is key in the development of a progressive planet.

To critique and create. More than ever, humanity is in need of individuals with advanced critical and creative thinking skills. The goal of this model is for the professional resulting from the Total Being Model to be able to find solutions in order to advance sustainable change to the structural problems of the local and global community. Knowledge is necessary but won’t equip individuals with required tools to propose solutions to 21st century problems. Therefore, critical and creative skills are pivotal in this model of education.

Critical skills is understood as the ability to identify, through logical thinking, the goodness and shortcomings of phenomena under study in order to make free judgments, independent of the implications from the environment.

The object of creative scientific thought is to reinforce the benefits of phenomena under criticism so that they remain, or to correct the problems found defective. Creative thinking is characterized by the originality of ideas, different points of view, innovative solutions, independent and individualistic behaviors.

The strategy to develop entrepreneurial skills in UIC’s students is the Entrepreneurial Project, which consists of students analyzing and criticizing a certain market and, with all their creative capacity, designing a new company for that medium.

It is hoped that it will be put into operation once the students graduate. However, experience indicates that, sometimes, from the second semester the firm begins to operate, and when the growth is remarkable, the student is forced to abandon his/her studies to attend the organization. This is not desertion. He/she is a precocious student who achieved the goal sooner than expected.

The Entrepreneurial Project is designed for students to apply knowledge acquired in the classes to their entrepreneurial project under development. For example, if students are enrolled in Commercial Law, the concrete application of knowledge consists of deciding the type of society to be founded, with whom, for what purpose, how the ends will be achieved, etc. to prepare the corresponding minutes; to analyze the different leasing contracts for the location of the company and to decide what is most convenient; to know the operation with the various instruments used in commercial transactions, etc. If they are enrolled in Accounting, students establish the accounting structure of the company and do an exercise on what is the computer package to be used, which items should enter the accounting; what is a balance sheet and profit and loss statement for the company’s accounts and how it is analyzed; what the process and what output information is needed periodically, etc. If they are enrolled in Advertising Campaigns course, the complete design of the company’s advertising will be carried out; the brief, the creative strategy, the advertising pieces, the means to be used, the sketches, the evaluation mechanisms, etc. will be taken into account and applied to the company under development.

The stimulation of the training of entrepreneurs requires maintaining a culture that helps the student in training to coexist and share a business environment that exercises them in the activities of entrepreneurial professionals. To contribute to the development of these skills, United International College created the UIC ENTREPRENEURIAL ECOSYSTEM, designed to help promote and constantly educate business people.