Universities and Entrepreneurship: Meeting the Educational and Social Challenges: Volume 11

Universities are increasingly looking at entrepreneurship as a way to bridge theory and practice. This is important in these challenging times when unexpected events and occurrences take place. It is becoming more important for universities to respond in an entrepreneurial manner to new trends to capitalise on learning and research opportunities. The aim of this chapter is to discuss how universities are acting in an entrepreneurial way by responding to educational and social challenges. This will help to understand fruitful new areas of teaching, research, service and engagement that can occur in a university setting based on entrepreneurial thinking.

The purpose of this chapter is to conduct a structured literature review to examine the relationship between entrepreneurship and emotional intelligence in academic settings as well as the current entrepreneurship pedagogy for flexible, innovative and creative graduates. One hundred and twenty-eight peer-reviewed papers were analysed based on Webster’s and Watson’s (2002) methodology. Papers classified into three topics and a content analysis was implemented to discuss about the publication year, journals, authors, frequency of keywords and research method adopted. The contribution of this chapter is twofold. It is a bibliometric study which provides a macropicture of a research field, its evolution and connections among studies, in order to be a starting point for future researchers who are already studying entrepreneurial education or entrepreneurship-related scientific areas. Also, this chapter helps academics to improve educational programmes and curriculum to increase students’ entrepreneurial intention taking into account the factors that affect it.

Entrepreneurship is a new field of research in Russian higher education. This chapter discusses the emergence of entrepreneurial education in Russian universities by examining their key documents and relevant curricula. Findings indicate that only a few modern Russian universities develop entrepreneurial programmes that contribute to the income of the less funded from research organisations. These programmes are mainly student-paid graduate programmes aimed at providing students with hard skills. The study also addresses factors that influence students’ entrepreneurial intention following the theory of planned behaviour. Beyond attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control, a new contextual variable of entrepreneurial environment and education significantly impacts intention. This result along with subjective norm influence implies that prospective graduate entrepreneurs in Russia are motivated to venture to contribute to their society. Finally, this study provides recommendations on how Russian universities could empower entrepreneurial education to undertake a substantial role in regional entrepreneurial ecosystem development.

This chapter provides insights into the activities carried out by alumni in the domain of academic entrepreneurship. Given the increasing role of alumni in the support to entrepreneurial learning in universities and the scant evidence about their actual engagement into these initiatives, it explores the alumni organisations affiliated to the population of 58 alumni organisations in 55 higher education institutions (HEI) in Italy, particularly for the activities designed to support entrepreneurship. The authors explore and define services related to entrepreneurship for and from the alumni. Among others, alumni organisations or clubs help members in accessing networks with their peers for career opportunities and role modelling. The authors contribute to the increasing literature about the entrepreneurial university by documenting the activities carried out by alumni organisations to foster entrepreneurship at their parent HEI and promoting an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Universities must take into consideration that peer support can be as important for spreading entrepreneurial initiatives within universities as other more formal supporting measures.

Entrepreneurship education should catch up with the current developments in today’s digitally interconnected and virtual world. As all forms of conducting business become digital, essentially entrepreneurship needs a new digital competence-based learning approach. This chapter proposes a Digital Communications competency profile that every modern entrepreneur should possess. The proposed profile incorporates digital marketing (DM) as it recognises the need for major changes in entrepreneurship educational programmes. The proposal is based on an extensive literature review, which reveals that future demand for competencies goes beyond basic traditional entrepreneurship skills to include digital communication. It is shown that future entrepreneurs should possess advanced communication skills, in DM, which includes social media marketing, digital marketing strategies, search engine optimisation, content marketing and E-mail marketing. These competencies would facilitate customer involvement and open innovation. As a result, via the process of co-creation creative ideas can be transformed into successful products and services. The modern entrepreneurship profile underlines the paramount role of digital communications skills, which should be incorporated in entrepreneurship educational programmes.

The chapter aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the entrepreneurship training programmes implemented in public and private universities in the entity of Guanajuato, located in the central part of Mexico. A simple random sample of 449 students who participated in these programmes was collected. The survey data were statistically analysed to determine if the participants’ capability of agency and the influence of their closest social groups – university, family and regional socioenvironmental – increase the entrepreneurial intentions of university students. Results showed that the capability of agency was directly improved after participation in the programme, while entrepreneurial intentions were indirectly influenced by the institutional and business environment.

The point of this study is to review the effect of entrepreneur education on the venture intention among the female undergraduate in the Nigeria University. The structural equation modelling was used in the equation analysis. The findings of the study will increase the awareness and acumen of entrepreneurship among female students. The analysis will help in developing entrepreneurial skills and aptitudes in the university’s business curriculum, which provides far-reaching exposure of critical thinking sessions that stimulate the generation of business ideas. It also helps to tailor business ideas to study and interest activities to motivate active participation, inspired progressively in the Nigeria ambience.

Literature has identified possible factors to entrepreneurial behaviour, including some antecedents of entrepreneurship intention among university students. This study stresses on the field of study and the attendance of an entrepreneurship course as moderators for such intention. Following the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the study compares the results of a survey with a sample of 220 students, conducted in two universities, one public and one private, the latter teaching an entrepreneurship course.

The authors found that (1) Ajzen’s TPB predicted entrepreneurial intention; (2) different field of studies show significant difference on entrepreneurial intention; (3) family and/or friends influence is associated with higher entrepreneurial intention, attitude and perceived behaviour control; (4) the intention to attend an entrepreneurship course is strongly associated with entrepreneurial intention; and (5) however, business-related studies and men do not indicate higher intention to take entrepreneurship course, contradicting previous studies.

The results open further topics for discussions that can be researched with qualitative studies, such as the reason why students who take entrepreneurship course do not predict higher entrepreneurial intention. Meanwhile the intention to attend an entrepreneurship course is associated with entrepreneurial intention.

The entrepreneurial education has obtained special attention by researchers hoping to develop better entrepreneurship programmes that may result in higher entrepreneurial activity outputs of students. The culture on its own is one of the main determinants, among others, of the entrepreneurial activities undertaken in different countries. In that sense, this research contributes to a greater understanding of the relationship between culture and entrepreneurial education. Using one of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s surveys, the National Experts’ Survey, the authors used Structural Equation Models to analyse the sample of N =  445 experts in Mexico as an effort to achieve a consensus about which of these two constructs is dependent on the other, ‘entrepreneurial education’ or ‘cultural and social norms’. The results of this chapter show that in Mexico there is an influence of the cultural and social norms on entrepreneurial education at all levels, primary, secondary, and superior. Nevertheless, an important limitation of the study was that it does not differentiate between private and public education, but yet it contributes to the understanding of the less visible entrepreneurial educational levels in the literature. This chapter aims with the phenomena of how teaching entrepreneurship works by analysing the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s social environment variable effect on entrepreneurial education. This research contributes to the evidence that the teaching practice under the socio-cultural dimension enables to detect the continuity factors to make an educational transformation.

This chapter is designed with the aim to determine the influence of sociodemographic variables on the capacity to generate social enterprises, such as sex, the student’s country, if only they study or if they study and work, as well as if they participate or direct a social enterprise in university students of Latin American business schools. This research adopted an inductive quantitative approach using a questionnaire. The participants were university students of business schools from Colombia, Mexico and Peru. Second-generation structural equation method (SEM-PLS) was used to analyse the results, using the SmartPLS 3.2.7 software applied to data on 3,739 university students. The results suggest that the entrepreneur role, labour situation, country and sex have a moderating effect in the relation between entrepreneurial orientation and entrepreneurial intention. Also, by using resampling technique Bootstrapping (5,000 times,p < 0.01), significance of the trajectory coefficients (beta) and effect size of the coefficients (beta) were measured to demonstrate significance. Finally, with this research the authors ascertain that entrepreneurial orientation positively influences entrepreneurial intention. thus explaining 42.4% of its variance. This chapter is the first attempt on investigating in university students of Latin American business schools about factors of entrepreneurship orientation and entrepreneurship intention, and has strong potential to contribute to development of policies and strategies to promote the growth of entrepreneurship activities in the universities.

The university is changing. Its social role is growing in diversity and complexity. In a knowledge-based society, there is a huge public expectation in the results and impacts of the university’s activities. Its traditional roles – training and qualification of individuals and production of new knowledge – are no longer valid. As a result of university–industry interactions, policy-making began to give additional significance to the role of the university in regional development, mainly motivated by shining examples of success in transferring scientific knowledge to valuable innovation, many through academic entrepreneurship. This change in the role of the university is reflected not only in the mode of knowledge production, which became more transdisciplinary and applied, but also in the active engagement of different institutional spheres, the university, the firm, the government, and end-users, creating new hybrid and overlapping areas for the governance of innovative dynamics. This chapter defines and analyses the position of the university in contemporary society as a socially legitimised institution for the production of knowledge and innovation. Three different theoretical traditions – Actor–Network Theory, Stakeholder Theory and territorial innovation models – inspire the analysis of 15 in-depth interviews with key actors in their local innovation system and knowledge networks around the University of Huelva (Andalusia, Spain). The main conclusions suggest that the university today faces a huge challenge in responding to the expectations that society places on it.

The authors present concepts developed at University of Naples Federico II (Italy), where the Challenge Based Learning methodology (CBL) is utilised in a programme aimed at software development for the Apple technology ecosystem. The collaborative and self-guided, inquiry-based learning method focusses on intrinsic motivation of learners, working on real world problems organised in projects (Challenges in CBL) with an experiential and progressive approach. As entrepreneurship is best promoted through practice, the programme is a guided immersion into reality that is entrepreneurial in nature, rather than a simulation of hypothetical projects, and requires learners to take ownership of entrepreneurial skills to complete the course. Academic research has shown that use of storytelling is beneficial to learning and can foster engaging and more formative experiences. Additionally, scholars have developed systems to design unscripted narratives within educational contexts using emergent narrative concepts. This conceptual chapter describes an educational experience design system that encourages unscripted, emergent narratives for experiential education. It categorises the components for designing an educational experience that allows the learning progression to be affectively driven by learners. By focussing on setting parameters and giving learners autonomy as co-authors, the model describes mechanisms that allow powerful, unscripted narratives to emerge based on intrinsic motivation. The Emergent Narrative System developed by the authors is a contribution to innovation in entrepreneurship teaching and intends to empower learners towards building entrepreneurial and twenty-first century skills complementary to software development education in a conducive and experiential learning environment.

Based on a single case approach, this chapter empirically explores the triple helix configuration of Centurion University of Technology and Management (CUTM) and its social innovation programme. The study uses case files and web available material to consider the nature of the university’s relationship with industry and government. The findings show that triple helix social innovation has yet to be studied in an Indian context. Also, CUTM’s human and social orientation is a driver of its triple helix interaction. The university’s pursuit and trust in employers’ participation in the curriculum and campus experience is the hallmark of its social and pedagogic success. To advance the literature, this chapter draws attention to a much-overlooked Indian context and, for practitioners, it demonstrates the inner-workings of a functioning triple helix system.

This chapter offers a conceptual perspective of what students need to understand to understand entrepreneurship, and educators’ views on how best to educate students in it, in response to calls for a greater understanding of the learning environment. The research uses the lens of the threshold concept framework to inform a conceptual approach to entrepreneurship education. The threshold concept framework posits that in any academic discipline there are concepts that have a particularly transformative effect on student learning representing a transformed way of understanding something, without which the learner cannot progress.

Research was undertaken in three stages to identify what is distinctive about thinking like an entrepreneur, how to educate students to think like entrepreneurs and how students understand thinking like entrepreneurs. The first and second stages of the study are the focus of this chapter. Candidate threshold concepts in entrepreneurship and educators’ perspectives of effective ways to educate students in entrepreneurship are presented.

Data from 11 individual and group semi-structured interviews conducted with 18 entrepreneurship educators in 10 higher education institutions across the UK was integrated with findings from a Delphi survey with 10 expert entrepreneurs.

By offering the perspectives of entrepreneurship educators and entrepreneurs, this chapter makes a valuable contribution to a conceptually grounded and innovative approach to entrepreneurship education.

The entrepreneur is often conceptualised as an individualistic hero (Essers & Benschop, 2007; Gill, 2017). Although this portrayal has been criticised as highly romanticised (Acs & Audretsch, 2003) it is still influential in the contemporary entrepreneurship literature (Down, 2010). Consequently, prevailing social discourses around entrepreneurship may restrict and even prevent an individual to develop their own entrepreneurial identity (Down & Giazitzoglu, 2014; Gill, 2017). In order to explore this issue, this chapter presents insights into the entrepreneurial experience of student entrepreneurs by exploring the role of entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial identities in new venture creation. In-depth interviews were carried out with 11 student entrepreneurs who had, individually or in partnership with others, started a venture whilst they were enrolled in higher education courses.

These findings challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions entrenched in the characterisation of the homogenous entrepreneur (Jones, 2014) and suggest that individuals can arrive at entrepreneurship in different ways. In order to demonstrate the diversity of entrepreneurial identities, the chapter highlights those that fit the orthodox depiction of entrepreneurs through vignettes from Nicole and Georgie. This is then contrasted with alternative depictions through vignettes from Joanna, Christa, Darcie and Paige. The experience of the latter demonstrates how entrepreneurial identities are formed through role enactment and socialisation into entrepreneurial communities. The findings propose universities can support student entrepreneurship through both formal and informal activities. The broader conceptions of entrepreneurial identities with respect to the role of universities and enterprise education are considered.

The basic role in the development of the national economy of each country plays their citizens – their entrepreneurs. Preparation of the society for entrepreneurial activities takes place during the education process. In the Polish National Development Program for years 2007–2013 the development of entrepreneurial competencies was prioritised to increase the competitiveness of the economy.

In this chapter a set of features referred to as entrepreneurial competencies was developed. They were divided into four groups, that is, technical, social, economic and managerial. In addition, the literature on entrepreneurship education was reviewed. The empirical part presents the results of own analysis on the methods for developing entrepreneurial competencies which are preferred by students and widely used at Polish universities in four fields of study: humanities, technical, natural and economic studies.

The research results show that the humanities rather do not attach significance to the analysed competencies. Studies in economics include them, but their educational programmes focus primarily on shaping a group of technical competencies. The method most often indicated by all groups of respondents as effective in developing individual entrepreneurial competencies was discussion. The project method came in second, and coaching in third place. Meanwhile, the lecture method still dominates in the educational practice in all fields of study.

This chapter presents the results of the original research project, which are guidelines for all responsible for shaping study programmes and deciding about the educational methods.