Skills Finland and Vocational College of Oulu introduce a new, innovative competition to the EuroSkills. In Entrepreneurship Challenge, the competitors establish their own private company and manage different tasks concerning business life. Entrepreneurship Challenge demonstration can be followed in Hall 3.

The Entrepreneurship Challenge is an innovative three-day competition with its emphasis on life-long learning. In teams of three, the competitors establish companies and manage them for the duration of the competition carrying out various tasks each day.

Competitors have to develop a business concept for their company, evaluate its strengths and success factors and come up with an attractive and descriptive company name. They have to analyse the needs of the customers and target groups, and decide about the appropriate actions to reach them.

When the business concept is ready and target groups defined, the competitors have to prepare a description of the production process of their product or service, a marketing plan and a simple funds flow statement. They also have to consider for example the aspects of internationalisation and sustainable development in their company. The final stage of the competition is the company presentation.

‒ Tasks in the challenge are based on the Finnish national curriculum for entrepreneurship studies, informs Pekka Karukka, who is one of the organisers of the demonstrations. ‒ Curriculum is derived from the EU’s common educational guidelines where life-long learning is one of the key elements. The objective is to offer the students basic knowledge and competence for establishing their own businesses in their areas of expertise.

Pekka Karukka teaches business economics in Oulu Vocational College. He organises the Entrepreneurship Challenge Demonstration together with his collegue Jukka Vehmas. The three competitors of the Finnish Team, Henna Hannila, Jenna Heiskari ja Anni Korhonen, are students of business economics in the same college. There are also two Portuguese teams competing in the Entrepreneurship Challenge.

The first official entrepreneurship challenge was held in April 2010 in Oulu in the Finnish national skills competition Taitaja2010. ‒ Competition was a huge success and that’s why we wanted to lift the challenge to the new, international level. It’s a great opportu nity to present this new competition in EuroSkills 2010. We hope that this demonstration inspires other countries to organise similar contests in their countries, says Jukka Vehmas. ‒ And maybe one day we will see Entrepreneurship as an official trade in EuroSkills Competition, he summarises the hopes of the whole team.

If you wish to get more information of the Entrepreneurship Challenge or interview the competitors, please contact
- Pekka Karukka, tel. +358 50 3174616 ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
- Jukka Vehmas, tel. +358 50 3174838 ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )