Ecopreneurial education and support: Developing the innovators of today and tomorrow

Abstract

Entrepreneurship and more, particularly ecopreneurship, are essential to drive the sustainable transitions needed in food supply chains. Existing pedagogic frameworks should address these academic disciplines and they should be embedded in the educational curricula. Even when ideas are formed that can drive sustainable change, the process from ideation to commercialization can be difficult: the so-called “valley of death.” This aim of this conceptual paper is to consider pedagogic and program design and the mechanisms required to enaction of a body of practice around entrepreneurship and, more specifically, ecopreneurship, within academic curricula and associated business incubators. This makes this paper of particular interest for academia, policy makers and industry support sectors alike. An existing university that has both a student enterprise and ecopreneurship program and an established agri-technology business incubator and accelerator is used as a case study to provide insight into how progress from ideation to commercialization can be more readily supported in a university setting. From a pedagogical perspective, it is incumbent to develop new conceptual, methodological and theoretically underpinned spiral pedagogies to teach and support future generations of learners at agricultural and land-based colleges and universities as to how to exploit and take advantage of entrepreneurial and ecopreneurial business opportunities. Productization, too, needs to be embedded into the ecopreneurial pedagogy and also consideration of how businesses and their associated ecopreneurs navigate from ideation to successful product/service commercialization.