Nurturing the creative spirit of entrepreneurs at Viadrina: a course review

What does studying at university mean for you? Boring lectures, long essays, and endless readings? Well, it can look like that. But it can also be the complete opposite: Studies suddenly seem to turn fresh, practical, and exciting, as we discovered not so long ago. If you are enrolled in the “Creativity & Entrepreneurship” course led by professor Dr. Georg Stadtmann.

A few weeks ago, we, along with other IBWL and IBA students, performed several assignments for the course that implied earning money by establishing their own mini-business or designing T-shirts on a customization platform. All in all, we managed to earn around 200 euros with all these projects. Wondering where did all this money go? Professor Stadtmann used the profit to book a cruise down the Oder River for all members of the course. Once again we discovered the proof that this course is not like any other.

This course was a good example of nurturing the creative spirit of today's students, who may be potential entrepreneurs of tomorrow. Creativity is defined as a skill that everyone can learn. This course not only taught us how to be more creative but also how to work in a team which in retrospect is the most important result. Instead of traditional ideas, we got to practice lateral thinking as a way of thinking outside the box. Various practical assignments over the weeks made the course even more interesting. The most powerful task was receiving intentional rejections which helped us to overcome the fear of negative answers from other people.

But the happiest moment in general for us was the feeling after completing all the tasks successfully while the most frustrating thing was time management. Overall, a unique course and a unique experience which we would highly recommend to anyone studying business. Because studying can actually be so much more than boring lectures!