The WU ENGAGE.EU Lab is a dynamic platform that brings together researchers, students, and external partners—including companies, public administration, NGOs, and societal actors—to collaboratively address societal challenges.

The Lab aims to facilitate collaboration across sectors by fostering co-creation, interdisciplinary teamwork, and challenge-driven innovation, thereby translating research insights and entrepreneurial ideas into real-world solutions with societal and economic impact.

The WU ENGAGE.EU Labis a cooperation between the WU Entrepreneurship Center and WU's Third Mission Office, combining their respective strengths:

• The WU Entrepreneurship Center contributes its expertise in facilitating entrepreneurial activities, innovation processes, and supporting early-stage ventures.

• The WU Third Mission Office serves as the main contact point for external partners, ensuring strong connections with companies, public administration, and civil society.

This partnership allows the Lab to act as a bridge between academia, industry, and society, ensuring that research-driven insights and student-led innovations are effectively implemented in real-world contexts.

• Students

• Researchers

• Startups

• Companies

• Civil society organizations

who wish to work together to identify, analyse, and develop solutions to various real-life societal challenges.

The solutions are developed using a challenge-based approach which engages interdisciplinary teams in designing, testing, and validating innovative solutions. The interdisciplinary teams may include local, regional or European stakeholders, who are part of the broad ENGAGE.EU partners’ networks.            

• The WU Engage Lab does not focus on a single theme but addresses a wide range of societally relevant topics. The topics are identified jointly in interdisciplinary teams or by any of the stakeholders at a given time.The topics align with the research activities at WU and ENGAGE.EU’s mission.

• With a wide range of topics, the Lab aims to respond to emerging societal needs while leveraging the full breadth of expertise at WU.

• We actively seek and involve relevant stakeholders from business, public administration, NGOs, and academia based on their expertise and alignment with the specific societal issue being addressed.

• This flexible and needs-based approach ensures that partnerships remain highly relevant, fostering meaningful engagement and maximizing impact within each project cycle. With a wide range of topics, the Lab aims to respond to emerging societal needs while leveraging the full breadth of expertise at our university.

The Collaboration Circle aims to identify relevant and practical research questions by collaboratively defining challenges through a structured process. This will serve as the foundation for future research and collaboration projects.

 

The ENGAGE.EU Expedition week is a one-week intensive, international and multidisciplinary co-design programme and learning experience for students who work together with experts and mentors on finding solutions to real-life problems. It is a collaborative program, which focuses on creating value for society and uses the framework for inno-preneurship as guiding principle. They offer formal and informal learning in context together with ENGAGE.EU partners.