Entrepreneurship Festival: raising student awareness of the entrepreneurial spirit

This article was first published on the edhec.edu website - 19/12/2024 

On 28 November and 5 December 2024, EDHEC Business School hosted the Entrepreneurship Festival on its Nice and Lille campuses. Organised by EDHEC Entrepreneurs, the school's network of start-up incubators, the event featured a variety of stands and conferences. The aim of the two-day event was to raise students' awareness of the entrepreneurial spirit, through meetings with key players in the entrepreneurial ecosystem - investment funds, incubators and entrepreneurs.  

Discovering entrepreneurial culture

In Nice and Lille, students had the opportunity to discover pre-incubation, a programme designed by EDHEC Entrepreneurs to introduce them to entrepreneurial culture during their studies. The incubator teams presented two of the three highlights of the pre-incubation scheme: the Startup Challenge, an elective open to Pre-Master's and Master's 1 students, and CEO for 6 months, which enables students to carry out their gap year internship within their own start-up. 

On both campuses, internship and job opportunities were on offer with start-ups from the EDHEC ecosystem and its partners. In Nice, Dorian Lacluque, Startup Program Manager at TechForward - the joint incubator of EDHEC, Eurecom and ITM, located in Sophia Antipolis - highlighted the startups he supports, as well as the broad outlines of the incubation programme. The GENERATIONS powered by EDHEC investment fund, set up by EDHEC in partnership with Ring Capital, was also on hand to present its initiatives to finance high-impact start-ups.

Meeting the key players in the ecosystem

The festival was also an opportunity for students to meet various entrepreneurs. In Nice, a round table on leadership provided an opportunity to hear about the careers of Tanya Bencheva-Vigier, founder of Native Spaces, a company specialising in space rental, and Enrique Garcia Bourne, co-founder of Osol, a start-up designing intelligent batteries. Michelle Sisto, Associate Professor at EDHEC, led a round table discussion on artificial intelligence and its potential for developing responsible start-ups, particularly in the healthcare sector. During this discussion, Pablo Fernandez, founder of ArtinLeap (a start-up specialising in artificial intelligence consultancy) presented his business and his solutions for reducing the carbon footprint of AI in companies.

On the Lille campus, Ludovic Dujardin, co-founder of Petit BamBou, the meditation application used by over 11 million people worldwide, told the story of how his start-up came to be. He also recounted the highlights of his career as an entrepreneur, and urged students to ‘demystify entrepreneurship’ and dare to take the plunge. Through his anecdotes and advice, he especially encouraged students to see failure as a learning experience and to cultivate resilience in order to bring their projects to fruition.