School of Management Fribourg (HEG-FR) Professor Raphaël Gaudart joined the Swiss Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) team back in 2015. A particular GEM finding stood out to him: Switzerland was lagging behind other peer economies as it related to entrepreneurship education in primary schools.
Gaudart decided he would proactively address this concern by launching a summer entrepreneurship camp for teenagers in Fribourg. He identified a sponsor – The Fribourg Canton Chamber of Commerce – that made it possible for 17 teenagers to go through a week-long immersion into the world entrepreneurship.
“ADOpreneurs” was launched in July 2016, also in partnership with the Engineering School and the Innovation Lab Fribourg. It has been running every year since then (except in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19).
“ADOpreneurs was the opportunity for these young people to immerse themselves in the practical world of entrepreneurship since they had to create a small enterprise from A to Z,” said Gaudart.
The students meet with entrepreneurs, visit different companies (including Google’s offices in Zurich) and take part in various interactive activities related to entrepreneurship, such as brainstorming and creativity sessions. They work on creating a protype for a business and designing a basic website to introduce their new ideas. They also learn the art of storytelling, finding the right formula for allocating roles in a company, defining a budget and looking for potential partners.
The week culminates with a launch event in which the teenagers present their projects to parents, professors and representatives from the different organizations involved with ADOpreneurs.
“It's great to carry out a project and get help and guidance from entrepreneurs and professionals,” explained Marie, a former participant.
Timon, another former participant, added: “It was fun, varied but also educational. As an entrepreneur you have a lot of freedom but you also have to think about a lot of things.”
School of Management Fribourg (HEG-FR) is a GEM Report Sponsor.