School-Work Alternation – Business model canvas for the touristic-cultural sector in Follonica and surroundings | Cultura REPublic

The School-Work Alternation program aims to teach students the use of some tools to create business models, in particular the BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS, a strategic management and boot model to develop new business models or document existing ones. It’s a graphic matrix with 9 thematic blocks describing the value proposition, infrastructure, clients and finances of a company or a product. It helps companies in the alignment of their activities by illustrating potential compromises.

The School-Work Alternation program has been designed to make it activatable both in presence and remotely to satisfy the needs of the school during the closing period, due to Covid.

After the first theoretical part, through laboratories and workshops, students will develop their idea of cultural business for their home territory and will proceed to fill in the BMC matrix. Everything will end with a real business presentation in Elevator pitch mode. 

Objectives

For participating students:

• To build the ability to develop and elaborate an idea into a business project
• To be able to interpret socio-economic needs of the local tourism
• To know how to use useful tools for business design
• To be able to present their idea in a attractive and synthetic way
• To learn to make feasibility analysis

For the participating school:

• To solve the problem of making distance Youth Apprenticeship Programs
• To propose activities to its educational offer that implement students’ transversal and/or soft skills, such as: autonomy, self-esteem, adaptability, resistance to stress, planning and organisational skill, precision and attention to detail, working towards goals, managing information, knowing effective communication, ability to work in team and leadership
• To develop connections with local entities of the touristic-cultural sector

Tools and methods used

• Focus groups
• Business Model Canvas
• Co-design
• Google Classroom

Expected results

• Improvement of students’ soft skills
• Improvement of students’ exposure skills
• Increased knowledge of the territory and its cultural offerings
• Better ability to present oneself on the professional world

Please note: The project has been proposed as “pilot” at Istituto Statale di Istruzione Superiore of Follonica (GR) with a total of 30 hours as under the School-Work Alternation but it can be modulated and adapted both in terms of contents and amount of hours on school’s needs.