Establishing communities of practice among students and start-up companies

This paper presents the concept and an empirical evaluation of the course “High-tech Entrepreneurship and New Media”. The course design is based on socio-cultural theories of learning and considers the role of social capital in entrepreneurial networks. By integrating student teams into the communities of practice of local start-ups, we offer learning opportunities to students, companies, and academia. The student teams are connected to each other and to their supervisors in academia and practice through a community-system. Moreover, the course is accompanied by a series of lectures and group discussions. In this paper we present empirical findings and reflect on changes in the design of the course which took place between its first and the second instantiation. These design changes were based on the empirical evaluation of the first course and a deeper analysis of the role of social capital.