Promoting entrepreneurial culture in a developing country like Pakistan is very crucial for the socio-economic growth. Transforming Academic Knowledge to develop Entrepreneurial Universities in Pakistan (TAKE-UP project) is a great first step contributing to it. The aim of EU funded Erasmus+ capacity building project is to uplift the potential of Pakistani Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) in the area of entrepreneurial culture, especially the development of entrepreneurial skills in students and faculty for business and product idea development. Two European universities i.e., University of Saarland, Germany and Athens University of Business and Economics (AUEB), Greece have partnered with an aim to share the best practices with the Pakistani partner universities.
In this regard, faculty members of GC University Lahore along with other 3 Pakistani partner universities; Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Comsats University Lahore, and University of Gujrat (UOG) were invited to Athens and Saarbrucken to observe the incubation process of European universities. During this visit we experienced and learnt a lot from the coaches and experts of the both institutes, but the highlight of the whole journey was the visit to Fabrication Lab (FabLab) at Saarland university. The equipment and machinery available for students and young entrepreneurs to test and build prototype models before the full-scale development was remarkable.
Building similar FabLabs in all four Pakistani universities will surely play a significant role in the new product idea development and/or refinement of existing ones
