Success Story – Establishing the TRIANGLE Co-Creation and Skills Lab for Entrepreneurial Learning
Context
Entrepreneurship education increasingly requires environments that go beyond traditional classrooms. To foster innovation, creativity, and collaboration, learners need spaces where ideas can be tested, discussed, and refined in interaction with peers, educators, and external stakeholders. Recognising this need, TRIANGLE committed to strengthening its educational infrastructure through the establishment of a Co-Creation and Skills Lab. The Lab was conceived as a cornerstone of TRIANGLE’s capacity-building objectives, supporting experiential learning and co-design methodologies aligned with modern entrepreneurship education practices.
The Challenge
The challenge was twofold. First, the consortium needed to design a physical space that could serve diverse users—students, academic staff, non-academic staff, and external innovators—while remaining flexible and adaptable. Second, ensuring that the Lab evolved in line with users’ real needs required an effective mechanism for continuous feedback and participatory decision-making. Traditional infrastructure projects often fail to fully engage users after initial design, resulting in underutilised or misaligned spaces. TRIANGLE sought to avoid this by embedding co-creation and data-informed refinement into the Lab’s development.
Actions Taken
TRIANGLE established a physical Co-Creation and Skills Lab designed to encourage collaboration, experimentation, and entrepreneurial learning. The Lab was equipped to support workshops, mentoring sessions, group work, and innovation challenges. To enhance participation and continuous improvement, the consortium integrated the Deliberate platform, an AI-powered discussion and feedback tool. This digital mechanism allowed stakeholders to share opinions, propose ideas, and discuss the Lab’s services, functionalities, and programmes in a structured way. The platform also enabled the collection of qualitative data to inform decision-making. By combining physical infrastructure with digital engagement tools, TRIANGLE ensured that users were actively involved in shaping the Lab, fostering a sense of ownership and relevance.
Results Achieved
The Co-Creation and Skills Lab quickly became a focal point for entrepreneurial learning activities. Participants engaged not only with the physical space but also with the Deliberate platform, contributing feedback and suggestions that informed improvements and future planning. The integration of digital and physical elements resulted in a flexible, user-centred environment that supports iterative learning and adaptation. The Lab successfully hosted training, mentoring, and collaborative activities, demonstrating its effectiveness as an innovation space.
Impact and Outcomes
The establishment of the Lab strengthened TRIANGLE’s entrepreneurship education infrastructure and provided a replicable model for future innovation spaces. It reinforced participatory design principles, improved the quality of learning experiences, and ensured that infrastructure development was closely aligned with user needs. In the long term, the Lab enhances institutional capacity to deliver high-quality, experiential entrepreneurship education and supports sustained innovation within HEIs.
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