The Accelerating Campus Entrepreneurship (ACE) Initiative

Abstract

According to the GEM Ireland Report (2009), those who have exposure to entrepreneurship education in Ireland have an increased propensity to start a new venture. The importance of entrepreneurial skills was picked up by the European Union which, in its Lisbon Strategy of March 2000, declared its objective of transforming Europe into the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010, and indicated that it considered entrepreneurship to be one of the ‘new basic skills’ for this knowledge-based economy. This paper examines how Irish HEIs can improve their provision of entrepreneurship education to promote positive economic growth. In particular, the authors explore the approach, process and research of the Accelerating Campus Entrepreneurship Initiative, which is a collaborative project involving five Irish HEIs aiming to produce entrepreneurial graduates in Ireland.