Note: The 2025-26 Entrepreneurship Exchange program brings together students from Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and the U.S. in small teams to identify market opportunities and develop business concepts that address real-world needs. Open to students from all majors, this virtual certificate program provides practical experience in civic-minded entrepreneurship. Over eight weeks, participants will collaborate across borders to identify a challenge from one of their countries and design an innovative business solution. Three cohorts of the program have run to-date.
At the William Davidson Institute, we’ve been running team-based virtual exchange programs since 2017. We continually see how students from all majors, often with no prior business coursework, come away with entrepreneurial skills and the drive and confidence to start a venture. They build friendships across time zones, and they start to notice that the challenges in their own communities aren’t so different from the challenges someone faces halfway around the world.
There’s a reason this approach works, and there’s a growing body of research behind it. The Entrepreneurship Exchange combines two pedagogies shown to be effective ways to teach entrepreneurship: experiential learning, or learning by doing; and virtual exchange, which puts students from different countries on a team to solve a shared problem online. Studies consistently find that learning outcomes are stronger when students build knowledge through their own experience rather than receiving it passively, and virtual exchange adds the intercultural competence, teamwork, and digital fluency employers now expect. Students finish the exchange having mapped out a venture.
Participants worked in teams across time zones, around packed class schedules, the Eid al-Fitr break, and final exams, while bridging real cultural differences. But navigating that complexity is part of the experience, and this group embraced it.
The third cohort wrapped up in June with a pitch showcase, where we announced the three winning teams and screened their video pitches live. Three teams rose to the top, evaluated on everything from problem definition and innovation to social impact, target market research, financial analysis, and the strength of their business model canvas. Members of the top team will receive a coaching and mentorship package.
Of the 28 pitches, here are the top three teams:
Project Jump took first place with an AI-driven micro-consultancy marketplace where students solve anonymized corporate challenges to show what they can actually do. The team, with members from the United States, Morocco, and Egypt, began with a stark projection: by 2030, reliance on flat, unverified resumes will leave millions of qualified graduates unemployed and cost companies billions annually. Their marketplace is dual-sided, connecting students who want to prove their skills through real projects with universities, corporations, and SMEs. The team built a working prototype, showcased in their pitch video, and backed it with a detailed business model canvas. Irene Shaker, a program mentor from the American University in Cairo (AUC), a key partner in this exchange, stated during the closing session: “Very interesting idea, great students are using AI, they know it will not replace humans, but students will use it to help develop new products.” Team member Marwan Madkour from Egypt added, “We used an AI to help create the prototype for this product.” Kim Barker, lecturer in management at Eastern Michigan University and one of the program instructors, added her observation: “Employers want employees who can hit the ground running with AI.”
SmartDrop Egypt, represented by two students from Egypt and one from Morocco, earned second place with a low-cost irrigation service built for small farmers that saves water, improves crops, and supports food security. Agriculture consumes most of Egypt’s freshwater, yet small farmers who irrigate by experience rather than real soil data end up wasting water and weakening their yields. SmartDrop’s answer is simple by design: clear irrigation advice over WhatsApp or SMS, drawn from basic soil-moisture sensors and local weather data, with no smartphone or complex technology required. The guidance is as plain as “Your soil is still wet. Wait 1 more day before watering.” Service tiers range from free WhatsApp tips to NGO-backed cooperative plans, keeping it affordable for the farmers who need it most. Noha Saada, a program mentor from AUC, called it “an innovative idea that touches an important problem in Egypt,” adding that “the team did a great job thinking through their business model.” Barker of EMU agreed the case held together: “A thorough presentation, the team laid out the business case for their service very well.”
RecyTech rounded out the top three, a tech-enabled recycling service with the tagline “Turning Trash into Treasure,” built for one of Egypt’s most visible problems. The team, with students from Egypt, Morocco, and the United States, opened with the scale of the problem: Egypt generates some 21 million tons of waste a year, and the streets, canals, and communities beside open dumpsites bear the cost. RecyTech rewards households for sorting their waste, sends collectors door-to-door in the evening once Cairo traffic has cleared, and uses QR-coded bags to keep each user’s payout traceable. AI handles material identification and instant payouts, and the model formally employs “Zabbaleen” collectors, Cairo’s traditional waste workers, at fair wages. Noha Saada praised the team’s consistency: “The strongest teams, such as RecyTech, demonstrated excellent collaboration, produced consistently strong written work across every assignment, and showed real growth in how they applied design thinking and financial planning concepts over time.” Irene Shaker was taken with the approach: “I love the idea. Scan the products using AI, reduce the hassle.” For team member Raghad, it came down to the people she worked alongside: “I had a supportive team that was hardworking throughout the journey.”
For the mentors who guided these teams from first sketch to final pitch, the payoff was watching the work come together. Maha Mourad, a program mentor from AUC, reflected: “seeing students’ initial ideas develop into tangible project outcomes with clear social impact was highly fulfilling, as it reflected both meaningful engagement and the successful application of course concepts to real-world challenges.”
Across three cohorts, students from the U.S. and the MENA region have shown what’s possible when you give them a real problem and a team that spans borders. Our alumni stay connected through our LinkedIn alumni group, and at WDI, we’re already planning our next virtual exchange program.