YES, 8.2.2012, Pori, Presentation notes, Conclusions

1. CONCLUSIONS
Mrs. Virpi Utriainen, conference moderator, who is also the Executive Director of
Junior Achievement Finland, quoted that “Entrepreneurship refers to an individual’s
ability to turn ideas into action” as the main topic throughout the conference and
highlighted that entrepreneurship education is action. She gave the general description
about the development of entrepreneurship in Finland and strengthened that school plays
an important role in it. She also stated that everyone has the same right to get
entrepreneurial education in Finland. Due to the popularity of social media, Virpi
thought that social media could be a platform and source for entrepreneurs to build more
networks and discover more opportunities. In addition to that, she stated that
understanding cultural differences is essential to open a new door for entrepreneurs, such
as learning from other colleges and other cultures, understanding the people you are
dealing with, learning how to deal with uncertainty etc.
Ms. Anna Bergdahl, Project Manager from County Administrative Board of
Östergötland, Sweden, highly evaluated the whole conference as the best practice
conference. She highlighted the diverse competitiveness of the partners in this YES
project, such as Finland, Poland, Slovakia and Spain ranked highest in terms of
entrepreneurial responsibility skills, Ireland ranked highest in relation to entrepreneurial
problem solving skills etc. She also showed the results based on the survey carried out in
these project in relation to entrepreneurship education, such as, there is the greater public
awareness among these eight countries that entrepreneurship education should start in
primary school; the bottle necks faced by each country varied greatly, for example, the
decision makers in Estonia, Finland and Slovakia thought that lack of finance is the bottle
neck for entrepreneurship education, but instead, decision makers in Poland thought lack
of qualified staff is the bottle neck.