Paper Title
Assessment of Collaborative Skills Among Entrepreneurship Students

Abstract
Problem statement: Inventiveness, creative problem-solving, financial literacy, risk tolerance and ability for resilience are important traits of entrepreneurs, but they are not the only ones needed to start a business and run a successful company. Harvard Business School and other entrepreneurship development organisations outline the importance of collaboration and communication skills. Through networking, entrepreneurs can combine their resources, get fast access to the information and expertise needed for successful business development. Collaboration enables enterprises to find new markets and expand globally. Moreover, collaboration is one of the ways in which businesses can innovate – “collaboration is the new innovation”. On the other hand, lack of networking and ineffective collaboration can lead to business failures. Collaboration skills need to be trained and taught to the future entrepreneurs in informal workshops and academic study programs. Academic entrepreneurship related study programs need to boost collaboration skills by applying different methods and approaches that will prepare students for the future business experience. Methods: Undergraduate entrepreneurship students who completed company creation and development courses were surveyed to evaluate efficiency and perception of collaboration experience acquired during this entrepreneurship course. Survey as a quantitative research method gave opportunity to stay anonymous, respondents can freely share experience, providing greater disclosure of sensitive information. SPSS software allows evaluating and finding connections between different variables. Results: Average team size chosen for two-month enterprise development team assignment was 4 and 5 entrepreneurship students per team. Overall cooperation was evaluated as very successful; entrepreneurship students indicated that they enjoy working with their teammates on such assignments; they felt comfortable sharing ideas with their teammates. Still with the very high score of positive cooperation evaluation, students did not become very convinced to become entrepreneurs as one of the results expected of such entrepreneurship courses.Conclusions: Research outcomes can be implemented in academic and practical study program planning processes and execution. Further research including pre-study and post-study student testing would help to evaluate entrepreneurship course effectiveness. Keywords - Entrepreneurship Education, Collaboration, Cooperation, Collaboration Skills.