EDUCATING ENTREPRENEURIAL ENGINEERS - TO BE CONTEXT-AWARE OR GENERIC?

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education (EE) is high on the agenda of governments and universities globally. With the new forms of entrepreneurship, there has been a surge of specific training programs and materials, e.g. ones dedicated to social entrepreneurship as well as for science & technology-based entrepreneurship. Parallel to this division of EE into subsegments, tools and methods such as the Business Model Canvas (BMC), Lean Start-Up and Customer Development methods, or Disciplined Entrepreneurship by MIT have spread to be used by EE practitioners globally. With the increasing globalization, virtualization, and mobility of learners, EE courses have learners differing in 1) their cultural context that reflects in their values and beliefs, 2) their educational and professional background, and 3) in the area - market and industry - where they aim to start their business. E.g., the process of entrepreneurship is likely to differ in dynamics when going into medical technology vs. mobile gaming, yet some aspects may be mutual to both businesses. Thus, EE education is facing a dilemma: How unified and non-context specific should the approach of the educator be to deliver EE in scale and keep the EE program manageable vs. how much to focus on the individuals or teams and their specific context. The paper draws its conclusions based on the quantitative survey done among 60 entrepreneurship educators globally in February-March 2022. The global respondent pool consisted of educators diverse in the context they come from, institutions and faculties they work at, and the type of entrepreneurs they have trained. The data analysis is based on descriptive statistics based on the assessments done by the respondents on 4- or 5-step Likert scales on perceived current EE practices and the perceived importance of different factors in successfully context-aware EE. The core taxonomy used to elaborate on context is the PESTEL-analysis of the environment, consisting of Political, Economical, Social, Technological, Ecological and Legal factors. The results indicate that the economical-technological consideration is weighted in today's EE generally speaking, whereas the truly context-aware EE would balance that leaning to economical and technological matters with more factors, especially the one of social context. Another takeaway to participants is a set of proposed EE designs that deal with the contradicting forces.