ENSAI supports student entrepreneurship and a spirit of innovation. A student-entrepreneur advisor assists students who wish to develop and implement their projects, drawing on Rennes’ particularly rich ecosystem.
Entrepreneurship and Intrapreneurship at ENSAI
In this elective course, the goal is to foster students’ entrepreneurial skills through guidance on creative projects carried out in small groups. The class covers the various stages of a project, from the initial idea to the business plan, and provides students with practical experience using key entrepreneurial tools, such as:
– Ideation and creativity: questioning your original idea to move it forward
– The personna method: changing perspectives, “putting yourself in a customer’s shoes”
– The value proposition: what solutions does my project truly offer?
– Competition and segmentation: looking at the Blue Ocean Strategy
– The business and financial model: how to make money?
– A “communicative” summary of the business plan using the Canvas model
– The art of the pitch: presenting your project and convincing your audience in 5 minutes
Station Rennes Innovation
ENSAI is a member of Station Rennes Innovation, a network of 11 higher education institutions in Rennes aimed at enriching, supporting, and accelerating innovative startup projects by students and alumni. It is a selective incubation program that offers student and alumni entrepreneurs comprehensive support in entrepreneurship. This alliance develops and coordinates a network of “incubators, schools, and universities” called “Sas de création” and implements an experimental, cross-school shared incubation program.
A “Creative Hub” was launched in 2022 on the Ker Lann campus between ECAM Rennes, UniLaSalle Rennes | Ecole des métiers de l’environnement and ENSAI.
The objective? To provide students from the three schools, who are motivated to bring their own projects to fruition, with support for their startup projects. The goal is to create a momentum for implementation that will help move these projects forward through access to resources and activities that include, in particular, presentations by “inspiring” entrepreneurs.
Pépite Bretagne
Pépite Bretagne is one of the 33 PEPITE (Student Hubs for Innovation, Technology Transfer, and Entrepreneurship) established in 2014 by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation to foster an entrepreneurial culture among students and recent graduates. The “student entrepreneur” status is presented to first-year students every year.
Student entrepreneurs can also benefit from the technological and innovative ecosystem at the University of Rennes, as well as its events and competitions that promote innovation and encourage engineering students to tackle the technological, economic, and environmental challenges facing our society.