Entrepreneurship
In promoting innovation culture, universities have a very important role since they are institutions dedicated to the quest for new knowledge. At Boğaziçi University, the practice of training people and conducting research towards innovation and entrepreneurship is a well established culture. TTO provides the following opportunities.
Encouraging students for new ways of thinking, fostering analytical and critical attitudes, providing structured training on innovation help entrepreneurship spread widely. At Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, courses on entrepreneurship are being offered to students; many students end up their own establishing companies through the projects they carry out during these courses. In addition, Engineering Faculty has been organizing the competition "New Dreams Innovative Ideas (Yeni Düşler Yenilikçi Düşünceler)" (recently renamed as “İşteBU Project Competition” www.istebu.org) with support from Elginkan Foundation every year since 2008. Through this competition, the University targets encouraging university students to generate new ideas, to develop these into business plans, andpromoting innovation and technology based entrepreneurship.
HayalEt Platform (www.hayalet.boun.edu.tr) is an initiative supported by the Istanbul Development Agency and led by Boğaziçi University TTO with the scope of technology transfer, innovation, entrepreneurship, business development, bringing together investors, and commercialization of new ideas. TTO provides consulting services to entrepreneurs involved in this platform. Consultancy services provided to entrepreneurs include:
- business model development
- marketing of business idea
- bringing together with the right investors
- helping entrepreneurs to find capital
- providing business start-up trainings
- informing entrepreneurs on available funding opportunities
TTO examines and evaluates project ideas coming from faculty members and researchers, undergraduate and graduate students. Project ideas from external entrepreneurs and participants of project competitions organized by the University which are open to everyone, such as İşteBU Project Competition, are being evaluated by Evaluation Boards. TTO supports those with high commercialization potential. Within the scope of TTO activities, entrepreneur candidates can benefit from seminars and practical trainings on many fields such as entrepreneurship, innovation, IP rights,finance, organization, business law, operational management, marketing, and sales provided by TTO as well as “Innovative Entrepreneurship and Effective Management Training Programmes". During trainings, successful examples are shared with the participants.
