Ap­plied En­tre­pren­eur­ship Academy

Project Goals

On the one hand, the Applied Entrepreneurship Academy (AEA) program aims at enabling graduating students of KU to develop sustainable business concepts around their innovative ideas by equipping them with necessary innovative thinking and entrepreneurial techniques. On the other hand, AEA aims at broadly establishing entrepreneurial thinking and practice-orientation into regular teaching programs of the different KU schools by training a significant number of KU lecturers in these fields.

The specific goals of the project are:

• developing education modules for entrepreneurship
• enabling integration of thesis projects with entrepreneurial character
• increasing the number of successful start-ups established by KU students and graduates
• bringing innovation and innovative thinking to KU's young graduates and supporting the further development of the country

Skill Development

Within the AEA program the participating lecturers of KU are trained to act as multiplicators in their respective KU schools with the goal to train other lecturers and to integrate practice- and innovation-oriented elements into their teaching approaches in regular curriculum classes. They are trained in the following areas:

• entrepreneurial mindset, personality & teams
• innovation creation and innovative thinking
• design thinking & lean startup
• understanding customers & markets
• Branding and Marketing
• Logistics and Supply Chain Management

HNU students as business coaches

In each project year,  a 10-day excursion of HNU business students to Nairobi is conducted in September. The HNU students are pairing up with KU entrepreneurs and act as business coaches in the process to improve and sharpen the entrepreneurs' business ideas and business models. During this excursion the HNU students apply their business knowledge and learn about Kenyan entrepreneurship culture, economy, and society.