The National Status Etudiant Entrepreneur, is accessible everywhere in France in one of the 29 PEPITE (Student Pole for Innovation, Transfer and Entrepreneurship) and it allows to build and develop an entrepreneurial project as a student, whatever the entrepreneurial approach (individual, collective, economic and / or social purpose, innovative or not, technological or not, with creation of activities or takeover of business or other legal structure) .

It is the PEPITE's Commitment Committee which is responsible for processing applications for the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. It is composed of the representatives of the PEPITE institutions, the pedagogical director of the Student-Entrepreneur Institution (D2E) and the PEPITE partners (support and funding structures, entrepreneurs, etc.).

L’Ecole de design Nantes Atlantique was invited in June 2018 to lead a discussion with the representatives of PEPITE FRANCE and PEPITE in the region to project PEPITE 2030. This workshop highlights the challenges associated with supporting students from one of the reference poles in Europe.

PEPITE FRANCE website

Based on the experience of the PEPITE and from a user journey, imagine the PEPITE in 2030:

What improvements are possible? What tools and services to deploy? What kind of links & networks?

The workshop helped to work on prospective scenarios, but also introduced participants to the design thinking methodologies.

Global presentation of the workshop process : (presentation here)

• Brainstorming / challenges: Participants set the context and immerse themselves in a forward-looking vision (see below);
• User map: this involves defining user profiles and building user paths appropriate to each profile, based on 4 stages: Awareness, Detection, Training, Accompaniment;
• Identification of difficulties and levers of innovation (post-it): It is a question of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each map to detect innovation opportunities.
• Questioning and challenge identified, exchanges: The exercise consists of the presentation of an axis envisaged in plenary and exchanges of all the group on the problematic / the stake / the proposal to be deployed.
• Development of solutions (idea brainstorming / lotus): Rapid brainstorming in 2 dimensions around the key words of the proposal

User journey map and innovation levers on post it hints with ideas

• Development of the idea at the plan: a summary poster allows to synthesize and enrich the proposal by taking in particular:
• The challenge, the title of the project, the issues, the context, the actors, the tools, and the “bricks of the project”, for a phasing of actions over time.
• This painting serves as a support for the final pitch of 5 minutes.

Final poster presentation support

• Persona sheet
• Step sheet for construction of the user journey map
• solutions sheet (to diversify the solutions)
• Action sheets
• Final poster

We do not present here the integral result of the session which remains in the field of the reflections of PEPITE but some elements presented here can be applicable to the project AYCH. Note that the context of PEPITE is to be connected to the university…

• What links and recognition with university: how to change universities and pedagogical practices?
• How to train / recognise trainers? Label, coaching ? Create a hybrid status at the University?
• How to be the heart of the educational transformation, academiepreneurship, of the learning university?
• How to abolish borders (age / student / employee)?
• How to integrate a non-territorial concept of intervention zone?
• How to work with the tools of artificial intelligence?
• What synergy with the multiplicity of existing devices (incubation, support)?
• What are these open and hybrid places / spaces ?

Lessons from the workshop

• Interesting results emerged and allowed for good exchanges between the various stakeholders.
• Prospective 2030: it will be better to clarify the stages and bricks of the project “until” 2030. Some groups have understood “from 2030”. It would be a question of starting from a context and potential in 2030 (icebreaker) and to talk about the first changes to be made today to face this projected context. For professionals, some of the ideas projected were far from their daily lives (projected on 2030) and therefore difficult to implement.
• In terms of time management, some groups had difficulties finishing within the allotted time. The construction of user journey map has overflowed: it would have been better to define and exchange on the axes before the lunch break.
• The meeting and the expertise of the PEPITE network could be remobilized within the framework of the AYCH project: they highlight the multiplicity of actors of the incubation and underline the importance of the positioning of AYCH devices…