The world continues to ask universities to produce sharper engineers, faster coders, and more innovative researchers. Yet the qualities that determine whether these graduates succeed (teamwork, adaptability, communication, and resourcefulness) are often left to chance. TU Wienʼs aptiTUdes.LAB is challenging that model, offering students the opportunity to develop these capabilities before they encounter them in the workplace.
aptiTUdes.LABʼs value lies in its simplicity: individual workshops, no application barriers, and easy to combine with the study curriculum. The programʼs real differentiator, however, is what happens inside the classroom. Students learn directly from domain experts: negotiation practitioners, project management specialists, AI builders, startup operators, communication strategists, industry professionals, and more, who treat each session not as a lecture but as an immersion. This hands-on, expert-led approach enables students to experience entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial thinking in a practical, rather than abstract, context.
Just as innovative is the programʼs inter-university composition. Delivered in collaboration with BOKU:Base and WU Gründungszentrum, the workshops bring together students from engineering, natural sciences, sustainability, and business. This group composition is rare in traditional curricula, yet it mirrors the very team structures that propel successful startups and innovation units. At aptiTUdes.LAB, a TU Wien informatics student that might be designing an AI prototype while exchanging perspectives with a BOKU sustainability expert and a WU business strategist: a dynamic that fundamentally elevates learning outcomes.
The numbers emphasise the momentum. The Summer Semester 2025 pilot offered seven workshops with a total of 80 spots, resulting in 18 TU Wien students earning certificates after completing at least three sessions. Encouraged by the enthusiastic uptake, TU Wien expanded the program for the Winter Semester 2025/26, offering twelve workshops, including four co-hosted with partner universities, and making 305 workshop spots available. Registrations surged to 141 students across three institutions: 91 from TU Wien, 28 from BOKU, and 22 from WU. Within TU Wienʼs cohort alone, 39% of women, representing 15 nationalities, and a diverse representation from all faculties highlight the programʼs inclusivity.
What distinguishes aptiTUdes.LAB in the broader landscape of entrepreneurial education is that it democratizes access to skills once reserved for selective programs. Research from the OECD* and the World Economic Forum consistently identifies entrepreneurial competencies (negotiation, communication, opportunity recognition, strategic failure interpretation, cross-disciplinary collaboration) as essential for the future workforce. Our initiative has taken these insights and turned them into accessible practice, proving a simple truth: when students gain direct access to experts, when they learn beside peers from different disciplines, and when barriers to participation are removed, innovation becomes not only teachable but inevitable.
Invitation for Workshop Holders
aptiTUdes.LAB is growing, and so is the demand from students eager to learn from real practitioners.
We welcome expressions of interest from individuals who may wish to contribute to shaping the next generation of innovators, whether as domain experts, experienced founders, facilitators, or in other capacities.
If you bring a skill, method, mindset, or story that could broaden a studentʼs perspective, we would be pleased to engage in an initial conversation to explore whether a collaboration might be a good mutual fit.
Please contact alexandra.alexandru@tuwien.ac.at for requests.
*References:
https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/about/projects/edu/education-2040/concept-notes/Skills_for_2030_concept_note.pdf
Text: Ifigeneia Petrocheilou, Marketing & PR, i²c