FORTHEM Entrepreneurship Summer School Ethics‑Driven Lean Startup Methods for Future Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship Summer Schools will be organised each year for students of all FORTHEM partner universities.

Summer School in 2026 - REGISTRATION IS OPEN

Title: “Ethics‑Driven Lean Startup Methods for Future Entrepreneurs”

Summer School dates: 1st - 5th June 2026

Application deadline: 1st March 2026

Host organisation: University of Valencia

Location of the mobility: Valencia (Spain)

Type of mobility: On-site attendance

Target group: Students

Description: This Entrepreneurship Summer School is designed to introduce participants to innovative ways of thinking and acting as entrepreneurs. The programme covers a wide range of topics, including ethics in entrepreneurship, idea generation, lean startup methodologies, business model analysis, and competitor analysis, among others. Participants will work collaboratively in international student teams and gain hands-on experience by developing projects and preparing for a final pitching session, which constitutes a core component of this intensive training experience.

Programme:
Monday, 1st June
9.30 - 11.15:    Welcome - Game for cultural differences - Course overview
11.15 - 11.45:    Coffee break
11.45 - 13.30:    New ways of being an entrepreneur - Ethics - IPR - Outcome (by lunch the students should have a team)
13.30 - 15.00: Lunch
15.00 - 17.30: Ideation (AI assisted) - Idea presentation - Idea evaluation

Tuesday, 2nd June
9.30 - 11.15:    Lean Startup methodologies and practice
11.15 - 11.45:    Coffee break
11.45 - 13.30:    Business model - Examples and possibilities
13.30 - 15.00: Lunch
15.00 - 17.30: Startup tools and practical assignments

Wednesday, 3rd June
9.30 - 11.15:    Customer validation - Sales
11.15 - 11.45:    Coffee break
11.45 - 13.30:    Competitor analysis - Market study and practical assignments
13.30 - 15.00: Lunch
15.00 - 17.30: Real customers

Thursday, 4th June
9.30 - 11.15:    Funding - Financial calculations - Startup capital and projection calculations
11.15 - 11.45:    Coffee break
11.45 - 13.30:    Calculations in practice
13.30 - 15.00: Lunch
15.00 - 17.30: Marketing communications - Preparing pitches

Friday, 5th June
9.30 - 11.15:    Preparing pitches
11.15 - 11.45:    Coffee break
11.45 - 13.30:    Preparing pitches
13.30 - 15.00: Lunch
15.00 - 17.30: FORTHEM Riot (Pitching) - Wrap up and goodbye

All listed times are set to Central European Time (CET).

Application procedure:
To successfully apply, each prospective participant must fill in this application form.

The deadline to complete this form is Sunday, 1st March 2026, 23:59 CET.

The applications received no later that the date indicated above will be reviewed by the host university, which will rank the applications based on the applicants’ CVs and motivation letters. The home universities may carry out a preselection of candidates with interviews after checking their eligibility.

The selected participants will be notified about the result by the end of March.

Please note that only up to three attendees per FORTHEM partner university can be selected for on-site participation.

Eligibility criteria:

• Registered Master's, PhD and final-year Bachelor's students of all academic areas, enrolled at a FORTHEM university
• Motivation letter (in English)
• CV (in English)
• Good English skills (B2 or higher). If your English skills are lower, you won’t be able to follow the course.

Selection procedure:

• Evaluation of the motivation letter (a 50-100 word piece)
• Evaluation of the CV
• In the event of a tie, priority will be given to students who have not previously participated in a FORTHEM mobility.
• If the number of valid applicants is higher than the number of participants that can be accepted, a waiting list will be created. In case of withdrawals, the candidates on the waiting list will be offered participation on a rolling basis.
• The host university reserves the right to allocate the participants on a basis different from the one described above, should any of the partner universities not use their originally allocated number of participants in full, on the basis of the waiting list.

Note about the motivation letter:
When writing the motivation letter, the applicants may take as a guide the following questions:

• Why would you like to participate in the summer school?
• Why do you think you would be a good candidate?
• What are your business ideas?

We kindly encourage you not to use AI to write your letter, since we would like to hear your own voice. Please use AI only for grammatical correction, if necessary.

Funding:

• There are FORTHEM Scholarships available for students from each FORTHEM Partner University. For more information, ass a student from JYU please contact forthem@jyu.fi when accepted as a participant.
• FORTHEM funding is available only for up to three students per FORTHEM Partner University, except for UV*. Once the host university has selected a number of candidates, the local FORTHEM Offices will verify whether they are eligible to receive the FORTHEM funding for the given event, in particular, verify whether they will not be double-funded during the mobility period. If any students are on a long-term mobility funded with an Erasmus+ grant, they cannot receive the FORTHEM funding for participating in this summer school; nevertheless, these students can contact their local FORTHEM Office to ask if it is possible to apply a special procedure and take a break in the long-term mobility for the whole duration of the summer school.

*UV students are not eligible to receive the FORTHEM funding on this occasion since the event is taking place at their home institution.

Contact (organisers):
Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at: stsforthem@uv.es.