Second Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fair 2019

By: Keydi Bent

In URACCAN Bluefields campus, the Second Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fair was held, developed as a space where students of this house of Intercultural Higher Education, from the different academic areas, share their experiences in the development and implementation of entrepreneurship and innovation. This has been implemented since 2018 where beneficiary students are still in their projects and increasingly satisfied with their fruits.

During this process, innovative students have had the accompaniment of teachers and the entrepreneurship commission, becoming an important element, because young people learn to survive with their small businesses. Innovative products included Christmas ornaments based on pine blossoms, fertilizers, pesticides, bamboo straws, among others.  

Culture of innovation and entrepreneurship

"There are phases that must be fulfilled so as not to fall into an invention, because we already know that innovation is something that generates a new value and therefore people make use of it, but once we have the innovative product we must follow the next step, which is entrepreneurship, which is a little more formal and already enter a little more negotiations or alliances with different actors who can collaborate together as a way out of the entrepreneurship stages," said Jonathan Mena Mungrillo, Consultant at The Open Innovation Center at Bluefields Indian & Caribbean University (BICU).

In addition, the engineer emphasized that "URACCAN University has been in its efforts to empower students to undertake and innovate in their classrooms while also promoting different products and services for the benefit of society," he said.

For her part, the Msc. Ilenia García, shared that this Fair "We wanted to make it more academic, in addition to the students presenting their innovation products, we developed a panel that was very interesting, because the young entrepreneurs of the venue who have participated in other fairs have also presented their experiences, they have told us the training processes in which they have participated, they have told us a little the lessons learned , the constraints, the challenges they have had to overcome throughout the course of their entrepreneurship projects," he said.

Motivation to entrepreneurship

The sense of entrepreneurship and innovation, is one of the pillars of URACCAN, that is why this is a way of motivating students to also get excited and identify that there are many ways to learn.

In this context, Reyna Estrada, benefiting from the First Entrepreneurship and Innovation Fair, expressed great appreciation to the authorities and teachers of URACCAN for the support provided.

"First of all I want to thank the authorities of URACCAN, the teachers, who have been a strong pillar for us and the invitations they have given us to participate, I want to tell you that I was part of a fair in Puerto Cabezas, which was a very beautiful and productive experience, are one of the opportunities offered by the university and it is important to take advantage of them". Emphasize.