In a recent paper presented at the NFF conference in Stockholm, Sweden, we outlined some obstacles to establishing venture creation programs. Our initial hypothesis was that it was difficult to establish a VCP, but we were proven wrong. It turned out that it is not at all that difficult to establish a VCP, the reason that they are so rare instead seemed to be that you must have the support from your university’s president. In fact some of the 13 VCPs that we have found so far are a result of a direct initative by the president of that university. This is the case of at least the programs in Lund and Louvain. Please contact us to get a copy of the paper.

We now have sent out a preliminary invitation to all 12 VCPs that we have found and listed so far. The response has been very positive from many! There seems to be an interest in gathering some of the most action-based entrepreneurship educators world-wide to a conference. We are also discussing with a well known publisher around the possibility to publish a book around the theme of action-based entrepreneurship education, with chapters written by the conference attendees, and the publisher’s response has also been very positive so far!

We now have completed a first version of an article describing and contrasting six different VCPs in Sweden, Norway, Belgium and USA. The article is based on interviews with the manager of each VCP, using an interview template covering various aspects of a VCP. When we analysed the empirical material, we could see some interesting characteristics more or less common. These trends were:

• An origin typology of the idea upon which the venture is based (student vs external idea)
• The importance of interdisciplinarity in program design
• The central role of legal and emotional ownership towards the venture created, and
• A focus on the process rather than the ‘conventional functional paradigms’

Please contact us if you are interested in getting a sneak preview of this article.

We now have added two more confirmed venture creation programs – one in USA and one in Belgium. In Oregon we have the Technology Entrepreneurship Program, where students get the opportunity to start real-life ventures – all of them are actually incorporated as formal part of the program, and some of the teams get the opportunity to compete in various business plan competition across USA and also outside of USA. In Belgium we have CPME, which is a truly cross-disciplinary program offering students from seven faculties to integrate the start-up of a real-life venture into a master program of their choice. CPME is also one of the earliest started programs that we have come across so far, started in 1997, which means that they have almost 15 years of experience. We will conduct an interview with the manager of the program shortly and hopefully find out more. The CPME program is also described in a chapter of the book found here.

If you are working on building the entrepreneurial university in your region, you are probably many times in great need to explain the what, why and when of creating a entrepreneurial university. Then this article by Torben Hager might come in handy. It gives a brief enough and still very theory-connected background of the field to allow for stressed top managers of a university to get a picture of what you are trying to make them understand. It even has a last page where they get a check list of what they need to decide on any week now. The article can be found in the book on sale here. You can also read most of the pages of it at Google Books here.

It is not only within entrepreneurship education that people discuss the need for new methods and approaches to teaching and learning. Sir Ken Robinson argues that the entire educational system needs to go through a complete transformation, and that today’s system is destroying the human capital of an entire world. See his interesting arguments in these videos:

Animated and shortened video with vivid sketches.

TED Talk by sir Ken Robinson.

In a recent article by Neck and Greene at Babson College they outline what they call a new research frontier of entrepreneurship as a method. This complements the existing three research frontiers of the entrepreneur as a hero, entrepreneurship as a process and entrepreneurship as cognition based. Implications for entrepreneurship educators include the need for starting business as coursework, using games and simulations, applying design-based thinking and emphasising reflective practice. Hopefully they come visit our blog where we list the programs most likely to fall within their newly named category! We actually considered adding Babson College to our list, but so far we did not think it fitted our current definition, since starting a business in the first year out of three makes it obvious to the student that she will not follow through to making it a real business, thus potentially bringing down the emotional investment. But maybe we were slightly too narrow-minded there? What do you think? Anyway, here is a link to the interesting article.

If you are a practicioner of action-based entrepreneurship education at a university you might have been confronted with critics stating that practice (of That kind) does not belong in a university setting (or any variation on that theme). Well, next time that happens, go get some help from the philosophers of education. For example you can recite Mr Learning-by-doing – John Dewey. For Dewey, learning and knowledge were closely linked to successful action in the world. Dewey stated some important factors of learning that often are omitted, such as the ethical, the aesthetic and interestingly the conative factors. Contemporary philosophers also offer help – Winch has focused his philosophical studies on the crucial role that training plays in learning. Read an excellent article by Paul Hager at University of Technology in Sydney on this topic here.

This week has been exciting for our research group, as Karen Williams-Middleton has passed her thesis defence and is now PhD in Entrepreneurial behaviour. Opponent was Professor Alain Fayolle, who is a world leader in our field. We had the pleasure of attending a seminar where Fayolle gave his view on international aspects of entrepreneurship education. He told us about an interesting report by a European expert group in the field, where they conclude, among many things, that “there seems to be a gap between the methods actually used and those that are viewed as the most effective and appropriate. Using experience-based teaching methods is crucial to developing entrepreneurial skills and abilities. Traditional educational methods (like lectures) do not correlate well with the development of entrepreneurial thinking.” Our premature feeling in the research project is that VCPs are quite scarce, despite their extensive use of action-based pedagogy that many scholars view as crucial, and this seems to be in line with the above quote. The report can be downloaded here.

In a recent article by William Scott Green on the subject of legitimacy of entrepreneurship education, he concludes that entrepreneurship can be regarded as a fundamental freedom for the individual – the ability to choose the kind of life one leads. This perspective has the potential of taking entrepreneurship education out of the firm grip of business schools, and become a topic of relevance to most students at any given university. Instead of entrepreneurship being a way of making business, it can become a way of thinking and living. For educators, this perspective can be a good way to turn a discussion around when our dear colleagues ask us why entrepreneurship education at all concerns them and their non-business students. The article can be found in the book on sale here.