Jerome S. Engel, Minet Schindehutte, Heidi M. Neck, Ray Smilor and Bill Rossi
In this opening chapter five highly experienced educators share insights that have been gleaned from teaching entrepreneurship for, collectively, over 60 years. Their experiences include undergraduate and graduate teaching, curricular and co-curricular development, and working with students in institutions that are private and public, small and large, and both research- and teaching-focused. They describe different teaching philosophies, styles, principles and techniques.
Creativity is integral to the entrepreneurial process. Yet creativity in the entrepreneurship classroom is given scant attention because of the challenges of outcome consistency and appropriate rubrics that build credibility. This chapter reveals 10 teaching behaviors that inhibit creativity in the classroom and demonstrates 10 approaches for achieving superior creative outcomes in student entrepreneurs.
Carlos Albornoz and José E. Amorós
The authors test the effect of entrepreneurship education on the three stages of business creation (intention, action and ownership). In doing so, it was found that only voluntary entrepreneurship education has positive effects on entrepreneurial intentions and actions; mandatory education did not impact intentions or actions.
Susana C. Santos, Silvia Fernandes Costa, Xaver Neumeyer and António Caetano
This chapter contributes to the debate about what and how entrepreneurship should be taught. First, cognitive entrepreneurship education is introduced as the answer to the what question. Cognitive entrepreneurship education emerges from where entrepreneurial cognition, evidence-based teaching and entrepreneurship education intersect. On the basis of this intersection, cognitive entrepreneurship education is defined as those activities which, based on available evidence, aim to foster the knowledge structures that individuals use to make assessments, judgments or decisions involving opportunity evaluation, and venture creation and growth. Second, it is proposed that experiential learning is the most adequate method for how entrepreneurship should be taught, as it is more effective for learning and changing knowledge structures and reasoning processes. Using the experiential learning model of Kolb (1984) the authors suggest that five subjects of cognitive entrepreneurship education can be delivered using specific learning styles. These two building blocks constitute the foundations for developing students’ mindsets and awareness of entrepreneurship.
When entrepreneurship educators today refer to “Lean Startup,” they are often describing a real-world, customer-centric approach to early concept development and innovation that 1) begins with a search for product–market fit, 2) progresses through cycles of hypothesis testing across the various building blocks of a potential business model, and 3) reaches a provisional “end of the beginning” with a launched startup poised for rapid growth. Since the phrase was first introduced, in 2008, Lean Startup has secured global embrace – as evidenced by best-selling books on the topic, university courses and programs built around its core concepts, and a multi-year, multimillion-dollar initiative funded by the United States’ National Science Foundation. Lean Startup clearly describes an approach that is philosophically and practically aligned with much of what entrepreneurs do and entrepreneurship educators teach. That said, little is truly known about Lean Startup’s unique or differentiated ability to deliver positive business results. Further, little academic attention has been given to how Lean Startup aligns with or adds to the larger set of tools, methods, perspectives and theories, long-lived and new, that populate a truly comprehensive portfolio in entrepreneurship education. This chapter reviews the emergence of the Lean Startup approach – deconstructing its component parts in an effort to begin asking the questions that might form the basis of more robust research around Lean Startup methods and outcomes.
Rebecca White, Giles Hertz and Kevin Moore
A few scholars have attempted to explore competencies as a way to understand entrepreneurial behavior, and recently a small number of schools are in the early stages of attempting to apply competency based education (CBE) models in their entrepreneurship programs. However, there is significant misunderstanding of what CBE must include in order to ensure the delivery of the desired results. This chapter explains how this process has worked in other contexts and is a call to action for entrepreneurship educators and a discussion of why a discipline-wide approach is the most effective and efficient pathway to CBE.
David W. Rosenthal
Based on a career as a distinguished case teacher, the author describes the core principles and approaches for successfully using cases in the classroom. It begins with what the case method is and its benefits to both student and teacher, goes on to explain the process and provides detailed suggestions gleaned from nearly 40 years of application.
Minet Schindehutte and Michael H. Morris
The critical role of experiential and co-curricular programming within an overall entrepreneurship education is explored. Categories of experiences, including a number of novel experiential tools, are identified. The concept of an experience portfolio is introduced as a tool for managing and enhancing a student’s exposure to applied elements of entrepreneurship. Core properties of the experience portfolio are reviewed, with attention devoted to the concept of balance, particularly as it relates to the different learning styles of students.