WU Innovative Teaching Award 2026 goes to our E&I AI Bootcamp for Entrepreneurs!

The Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation has been awarded the WU Prize for Innovative Teaching 2025 for the course "E&I Zone: Artificial Intelligence - AI Bootcamp for Entrepreneurs." The prize recognizes outstanding contributions to teaching excellence at WU Vienna.

A Sprint, Not a Semester

The course is built around a radical premise: in just 2.5 days, Bachelor's students develop a real business idea, validate it, and pitch a full commercialization strategy - all powered by generative AI tools. The format is deliberately intense. Structured as an entrepreneurial sprint, the seminar compresses months of typical venture-building into a single, high-energy experience under the theme "Empowering Entrepreneurs with AI."

What Students Actually Do

Participants move through the three classic phases of the entrepreneurial process - opportunity recognition, evaluation, and exploitation - integrating state-of-the-art AI tools at every step:

• Recognize innovative business opportunities

• Evaluate them through customer validation, market research, and competitor analysis

• Exploit them by developing go-to-market strategies and viable business models

The seminar culminates in a Demo Day, where student teams pitch their AI-supported business proposals in a live, class-internal showcase.

The result?

A learning experience that leaves students not just AI-literate, but AI-ready: equipped to use intelligent tools as a genuine competitive advantage from day one of their entrepreneurial journey.