English

The Entrepreneurship Olympiad – knowledge, skills, attitudes

The Entrepreneurship Olympiad is an annual national competition addressed to pupils from secondary schools. It has been organized by the Foundation for the Promotion and Accreditation of Economic Education with Universities of Economics from Cracow, Katowice, Poznan, Wroclaw and the Warsaw School of Economics since 2005. The strategic partners of the Olympiad are: the Polish-American Freedom Foundation and the National Bank of Poland.

The contest is very popular among young people. The first edition attracted an impressive number of 14 000 participants from over 730 schools, 19 000 from 931 schools applied for the second one, 15 000 from over 800 schools for the third one, almost 20 000 from over 1000 schools for the fourth one, over 21 000 from over 1100 schools for the fifth one, a similar number for sixth one, and over 19 000 from over 1000 schools for the seventh one, almost 21 000 from over 1100 schools for the eighth one, over 23 000 from over 1200 schools for the ninth one, over 20 000 from 1102 schools for the tenth one, over 17 700 from 1051 schools for eleventh one and over 15 600 from almost 1000 schools for recent one. 

The Olympiad aims at promoting and strengthening entrepreneurship among pupils of secondary schools, creating a positive climate over business activity and designing a didactic model which would support teachers in encouraging top-pupils to develop their interest in economy and to study at universities of economics. The required knowledge is compatible with the curriculum of the course on entrepreneurship taught at secondary schools. It is also each year enriched with one leitmotiv (so far, there were as follows: ‘Ethics in Business’ – 1^st  edition, ‘Creating the Enterprise’s Value’ – 2^nd edition, ‘Psychology of Business’ – 3^rd edition, ‘Modern Management − Concepts and Methods’ – 4^th edition, ‘Marketing in the Enterprise – Mechanisms, Instruments, Strategies’ – 5^th edition, ‘Market Investor – Stock Exchange, Privatizations, Mergers and Acquisitions’ – 6^th edition and ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ – 7^th edition. ‘People in the Enterprise’ – 8^th edition, ‘Running own business’ – 9^th edition, ‘Change management’ – 10^th edition, ‘New competitive advantages – Technology, Information, Community’ – 11^th edition, ‘Leadership in Business’ – 12^th edition. ‘Success in Business’ is planned for the 13th edition. Diverse aims and range of the Olympiad’s themes result in a situation when both the knowledge of participants and the practical aspects: their entrepreneurial attitudes and behaviours are being assessed. The knowledge is evaluated with the use of tests and essays whereas attitudes and behaviours are graded during case studies and presentations.