Educating Entrepreneurs

Innovative Models and New Perspectives

Dafna Kariv

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138542846
• eBook ISBN: 9781351007986
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

As entrepreneurship programs proliferate—from classes in higher education to incubators, accelerators, open innovation platforms, and innovation factories—our understanding of the advantages and challenges of different modes of learning becomes increasingly obscured. In Educating Entrepreneurs, Kariv provides an impressively broad and thorough overview of the field of entrepreneurship education, along with practical tools for students to be able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the different options that exist, as well as for these programs' developers and managing teams to be able to plan and manage such processes.

Examining these programs, which are found both within and outside of academia, along with insights into their challenges and opportunities, should help students grasp the entrepreneurship education field, its goals, target audience, and ecosystem involvement. Kariv supplements this comprehensive evaluation with case studies and examples that tie the theory to practical applications. Students can read about contemporary ventures, such as Y Combinators, Techstars, and SOSA, giving them concrete examples to relate to. Interviews with program stakeholders around the world complete the view, with an exploration of the cultural and country-based dynamics related to programs developed in specific countries.

Being both thorough and informative, this book will serve students and faculty of entrepreneurship courses, as well as practitioners looking to understand their entrepreneurship education options.

1

A CONTEXTUAL OVERVIEW OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION PROGRAMS

Incubators, accelerators, academic programs, boot camps, co-working spaces, corporate-based innovation centers, impact hubs, scaling accelerators, startup factories, venture builders, startup studios, venture labs, government programs—these are just some of the programs designed for adult entrepreneurs. The burgeoning interest in, and proliferation of, the number of programs for entrepreneurs validate the importance of education for the success of existing and potential entrepreneurs (Matlay, 2006; Politis, 2005).

The more programs that are offered, the less their natural audience and stakeholders know about what they offer and their competitive advantages or distinguishing features compared to all other programs. The programs are diverse, emerging from different bodies (private, governmental, local, national), and stem from different goals and interests. The hidden promise that such programs will ‘create’ the most successful entrepreneurs captivates the entrepreneur, who may choose any one program at random, even if it is not best suited to his/her needs or expectations. Thus, despite the presumed benefits, the proliferation of such programs may, in fact, be counterproductive. In reality, the multiplicity of programs has attracted its share of criticism, given the dearth of research scrutinizing their goals, structures, delivery, teachers, content, etc.

Programs for entrepreneurs have thrived in the past decade within the intertwined contexts of entrepreneurship–education–environment (ecosystem). Three main insights have been linked to their proliferation: (a) research in the broad field of EE has flourished; (b) the role and impact of entrepreneurship have intensified at both the macro and micro levels; (c) in practice, EE has not undergone the anticipated significant changes, while the entrepreneurship and education fields have matured and have undergone such changes (Covin, Green, & Slevin, 2006; Kuratko, 2005; Mintzberg, 2004).

The vast interest in EE goes beyond special issues in leading academic conferences or the development of flagship academic programs to educate entrepreneurs. The World Bank¹ has dedicated funds to thoroughly investigate the dimensions of EE the world over; the European Commission has devoted funds to this area of investigation as well, and is calling for research and practice to contribute to EE, training and teaching²; global companies are subsidizing and implementing entrepreneurship programs. According to the Global Accelerator Report 2015 (Brunet, Grof, & Izquierdo, 2016), the accelerator industry has undergone vast development worldwide: in the US, there are 2522 accelerators, 1124 in the UK, 568 in India and 430 in Israel, together with a total amount invested worldwide of almost US $200,000,00.³ The same exponential growth trends emerge from a report on incubators⁴ that delineates their role in providing better value for the ecosystem and startups.

Turning to a test case, WeWork, a co-working space for entrepreneurs, has raised $969 million in funding at a $10 billion valuation, and it is the 11th most valuable startup in the world;⁵ it is growing exponentially, expanding to various locations worldwide. Its goal is to provide co-working spaces, community and services by enabling the startups that are working under the same roof to become reciprocal service providers and eventually create a community. Entrepreneurs benefit from the shared space, which allows them to learn, adapt and adjust their ideas and operation through their community’s service, feedback, networks, assistance, and more. Drawing on the concept of a venue to support entrepreneurs, different co-working spaces have arisen for craftsmen, artists and the culinary field, confirming the influence of such programs on a growing array of stakeholders. WeWork is mentioned here as an example of a co-working space that can be regarded as a revolutionary concept for entrepreneurial learning, as entrepreneurs can proactively satisfy their most immediate needs by sharing, collaborating, partnering and establishing mentorships, mainly informally through practical trial and error experience, rather than traditional education. This is a personalized concept that is catching on worldwide.

RockaLabs⁶ from Colombia is another leading edge, innovative concept for entrepreneurs—the venture builder. The vision behind this concept lies in developing businesses through a combination of startup development, shared resources and other integrative processes, including design, development of a customer base, business development and market research, among others. At RockaLabs, the approach draws on the shared operation of the most talented experts in different areas of the entrepreneurial businesses’ stages of development: from finding opportunities, resources and prototyping, to ideation, analysis, production and growth. Khan Academy⁷ is another enabling program for people who wish to gain and exercise knowledge. It was not meant for entrepreneurs at the outset, but as a complete learning dashboard to guide students through courses on a wide variety of topics. However, it inspired the development of a personalized learning dashboard that enables entrepreneurs to gain knowledge relevant to their needs at their own pace, including virtually in ‘international classrooms’, thereby benefiting from international networks.

These examples reflect the desire for a platform that offers innovative enablers for entrepreneurs to operate, share, learn, gain relevant knowledge, expand networks, and much more. However, there is a real lack of smart lists, reports and meticulous research on the variety of programs for entrepreneurs. The aforementioned reports on accelerators and incubators touch upon only a fragment of the widespread realm of ‘bodies’ aimed at bringing customized value to entrepreneurs, their businesses and their ecosystem, via innovative, more personalized programs.

Education through an Entrepreneurial and Contextual Framework

AT-A-GLANCE

Spending time in a graduate student exchange program in Europe, Reach and Montha, two Cambodian school teachers, figured out that ‘creativity’ is differently interpreted in Cambodia, Taiwan and Thailand, where they spent most of their lives, as compared to France and the Netherlands, where they have been staying for the exchange programs. They are in the midst of developing a program aimed at introducing creativity to entrepreneurial businesses by involving experienced business people virtually, in a cross-cultural way. Their first pilot has been enthusiastically received by a ‘pair’ who have been virtually matched to induce more creativity in their startup. The founding team from Cambodia, developing a real-time data analysis platform, in a very early stage, were paired with Jean-Claude, the head of the innovation department at an international high-tech company in France. Jean-Claude and his team worked with the founders to grasp the idea’s cutting-edge market opportunities. Reach and Montha are now developing teaching material to allow the startups that have gone through the pairing process to document and make use of their virtual creativity mentoring.

Food for thought:

What are the main challenges that ‘international’ programs such as this may encounter?

Ecosystem—Entrepreneurship is nurtured in, and fueled by, its ecosystem. Entrepreneurship evolves in a context, and is consequently shaped by the mindsets, habits, perceptions, interests, exchanges, collaborations and strategies sought to introduce sustainable value with its shareholders. Therefore, EE is affected by, and simultaneously affects, not only the participants of the programs, but also the community, sector, industry, suppliers, and potential or existing customers and investors, among others.

An international outlook–—A global view of education and learning has continually been considered a leading subject of research in affecting individual knowledge, attitudes and performance, among others (Hunter-Jones, 2012; Jonsson & Rudolphi, 2011; Ogbu, 1992); on the other hand, within the research on EE, emphasis has been devoted to specific topics, such as opportunity exploitation and entrepreneurial-related capabilities (Rae, 2007), covered by programs devoted to entrepreneurs. Because entrepreneurship and education both occur in their respective contexts, it seems natural to enquire into EE within a context. Kolb’s (1984) leading model stresses that learning requires a transformation of experiences into a process that brings meaning to the experiences through a process of learning assimilation. This is a process of making sense of the material and practices offered in the programs. Thoroughly understanding EE requires broadening the research scope to cultural, regional and national aspects (Holcomb, Holmes Jr., & Connelly, 2009). Cultural and national differences may be reflected in various dimensions, for example, cross-cultural differences in proneness to entrepreneurship, approaches to competitive issues, core competencies, resource exploitation, strategic and financial aspects of the business, the starting points of new venture creation, as well as objective measures such as political aspects, legal systems, regulatory matters, market dynamics, viability of capital markets and availability of institutional funds. This book aims to embrace the effects of the environment and the ecosystem and illuminate the diversity of the entrepreneurship programs’ processes in different countries. The conducted interviews that are presented as case studies will illustrate a large scope of programs across countries.

Innovation—While EE is attracting a great deal of attention, there is still a dearth of integrated knowledge in this field, which is both well-established in research and reflects the natio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 A Contextual Overview of Entrepreneurship Education Programs
• 2 What Does Education Entail for Entrepreneurs?
• 3 The What, Why and How of Entrepreneurial Education
• 4 There Is No ‘One Size Fits All’: New Concepts in Educating Entrepreneurs
• 5 The Entrepreneur’s Perspective
• 6 The Sharing Economy and Shared Entrepreneurial Spaces Nexus
• 7 The New Breed of Programs and Academia’s Role
• 8 Portraying the Enabling Platforms: Incubators
• 9 The Rise of the Acceleration Model
• 10 The Evolution of Innovative Enabling Platforms
• 11 The Role of the Environment in Fostering Entrepreneurship
• 12 Evaluation, Implications and Future Avenues
• Index