Interdisciplinary Innovation Framework - A Unique Approach to the Development of Students' Entrepreneurship with a Focus on Real-Life Problems

Working with real-life assignments has proven to help engineering students connect theory with practice. However, a good solution requires an innovative approach and comes in the marketplace with entrepreneurial and multidisciplinary thinking. This paper describes a project called the Interdisciplinary Innovation Framework, designed to improve students' soft skills in all the domains mentioned above. We brought together students from three faculties (economics, engineering, and medical). The program did not increase students' workload during the semester to avoid overloading the students and keep them motivated. It took place as much as possible within the framework of regular classes. In collaboration with mentors from the industry, we prepared five real-life assignments for students in the healthcare sector. At the initial ideathon, students formed multidisciplinary teams, and during consultations with mentors, each team chose a topic and reviewed a draft procedure at the end. At this stage, we focused on proposing an innovative solution. In the second phase, students were preparing a startup to deliver the proposed solution to the market. This phase lasted five weeks. To support students, we provided them with a MOOC introducing the critical technologies of the solution. Students had access to an online workshop focused on project presentation. Some students also attended a hands-on workshop on agile development management during their class. For the engineering students, we organized a hackathon led by experts and visited several related companies. The economists supervised costing and economic analysis, while the medical students concentrated on populating the domainspecific part of the solution and the needs of the solution users. Team members had to synchronize their progress and collaborate. The program concluded with a public presentation of all teams' work to a jury of industry representatives, some of whom invest in start-ups in real life. In the text, we present in detail the methodology of preparing such a project, including highlighting the critical and risky parts, and we also summarize the feedback from students and other participants. Finally, we briefly summarize the experience of the second year, which is still ongoing at the time of the text deadline and serves to test the functionality of the proposed methodology.