LEINN (Entrepreneurial Leadership and Innovation)

LEINN (Entrepreneurial Leadership and Innovation) is an official university degree, created in 2008, which uses "learning by doing" as its core approach to education. This method has sparked some controversy, as it breaks away from traditional academic teaching. Throughout the four-year program, you create a company with 15 other young people, don't use traditional academic books, and travel the world—or at least that's the general idea.

By the time you finish LEINN, it feels like 10 years have passed. It’s an extremely demanding degree right from day one. Imagine starting a company with 15 strangers—that’s exactly what happened to us. The first two years were spent just building a solid work culture that allowed us to create projects and meet the academic challenges set by the university. Although there’s a lot of freedom, the university set clear objectives every year that we had to achieve: we needed to generate income to fund our activities, acquire knowledge from books, meet with companies to learn in different ways, and much more.

Those first two years were crucial in breaking away from the traditional school mindset we had coming from high school. We learned how to work as a team, how to communicate effectively, how to handle conflicts, and how to engage in meaningful dialogue. We met twice a week for four-hour sessions, guided by a coach who helped us solve problems and keep progressing. Our team was structured with four team leaders, each with a specific role, and at the beginning of each semester, we created a strategy to achieve both the university's objectives and our own. At the end of each semester, we spent three intense days evaluating one another. This was a key moment, as all the work had been done, and now it was time for your peers to evaluate you.

We also worked with the 360º feedback system, where each member of the team told you, one by one, what you had done well and what you needed to improve. While challenging, this process was very rewarding.

This is just one aspect of LEINN. There’s also the more personal side, where you share a lot of time with people you grow really close to. One of my most memorable experiences was our trip to South Korea in our third year. We spent three months in South Korea and India, learning about their cultures and work practices. It was a time when our team came together like never before, and we shared some unforgettable moments.

The last year is mainly focused on the Final Degree Project (PFG). You have the option to either start your own business or work on an intrapreneurship project within an existing company. I chose the second option, working for a Mexican company that needed a dynamic and creative profile to introduce a product they were selling in Mexico into the Spanish market.

I’m sure you’ll have many questions if you’ve read this far. If you’re interested in learning more, feel free to ask 🙂.