Encouraging Entrepreneurial Competence Development in Italian University Students: Insights from the “Contamination Lab” Cases

This chapter aims to contribute to the debate related to entrepreneurship education (EE) within Italian universities. Specifically, it investigates the strategic role of the Italian Contamination Labs (CLabs) created inside some public universities and financed by the MIUR (Italian Ministry of University and Research) as innovative laboratories aimed at developing an entrepreneurial mindset, creativity, and innovation among the university students enrolled in the different degree programs. Through a cross-case study comparison of four Italian CLabs starting in North and South Italy from 2017, it presents the learning approaches and EE methodologies adopted to create an entrepreneurial awareness, mindset, and capability in students with different educational background. Findings demonstrate the crucial role of knowledge contamination in a permanent laboratory where business idea presentation, open innovation challenge, contamination workshop on specialized topics, enterprise projects, and business games are important vehicles for generating future student entrepreneurs and the achievement of the universities’ third mission aim. Implications for practices are delineated in terms of general recommendations that university should adopt according to the Quadruple Helix paradigm.