Abstract
The scholarly and educational field of entrepreneurship has rapidly expanded and evolved over time, carrying promises of enhanced economic growth and prosperity for nations that harness it. Such speedy establishment and expansion of entrepreneurship education, however, may have obscured the onto-epistemological underpinnings of our pedagogical methods and students’ learning. Thus, the following questions may need attention: Why does entrepreneurship education need to be refocused? Under what onto-epistemological rationale should such renewal be brought forward? And what could be gained for the field of entrepreneurship education? This conceptual paper opens discussions about these three questions from the perspective of entrepreneuring. Entrepreneuring with its underlying process and practice onto-epistemology may be a propitious “conceptual attractor” for the classroom, bringing forward four key pillars for entrepreneurship education to be taken into account: (1) situatedness in space and time; (2) relatedness and open-endedness; (3) everyday creativity and play; (4) reflexivity. The paper contributes to entrepreneurship education by proposing specific learning objectives, teaching methods, and assessment practices for each of the aforementioned four pillars and invites educators to consider entrepreneuring, social and more mainstream perspectives of entrepreneurship not as exclusive but as integrative perspectives that can be unified under the “socializing” umbrella of entrepreneuring.
Introduction
Entrepreneurship programs and courses have proliferated globally, framing entrepreneurship as a significant economic force (Kuratko, 2005). Entrepreneurship education is credited with yielding socially beneficial outcomes (Nabi et al., 2017), specifically enhancing students’ business venturing skills and fostering start-up founding post-graduation; both of which are linked to job creation and economic growth. This strong interest in understanding entrepreneurship—particularly regarding the opportunities for engaging in entrepreneurship activities and the intricacies of business venturing processes, has spurred significant scholarly output; the establishment of a dedicated academic division and the rapid advancement of entrepreneurship education (Landström & Lindhe, 2016). However, the speed in which entrepreneurship scholarship and education has developed raises critical questions about whether such rapidity has obscured certain assumptions, methods, onto-epistemological understanding of the entrepreneurial phenomenon; subsequently the pedagogical practices and methods currently in use (Liguori et al., 2018; Rideout & Gray, 2013).
It may now be time to pause and critically reflect on the trajectory of entrepreneurship education to date. This reflection should involve grappling with challenging questions: Why does entrepreneurship education needs to be refocused? What onto-epistemological understandings should guide this renewal and what implications may it hold for pedagogical methods and practices? What could the field of entrepreneurship education gain? This conceptual paper seeks to answer these pivotal questions from the perspective of entrepreneuring with the aim to stimulate discussions on consolidating and enhancing diverse pedagogical approaches in entrepreneurship education, while nurturing interdisciplinary engagement, fostering a creative, inclusive environment for emerging entrepreneuring communities.
This paper posits that entrepreneurship education is ripe for a renewal, as its rapid establishment, through a more mainstream approach, may have led to the development of overly generalized worldviews and knowledge claims (e.g., beachhead market, Aulet, 2017), and the codification of entrepreneurial processes into linear and causal sequences. This has resulted the typification of a small number of available and acceptable entrepreneurial identities (Higgins et al., 2018). Such tight constrains could impede the development of enterprising individuals and collectives, as well as entrepreneurial learning, by narrowing the “possibilities” of who can be an entrepreneur, what venturing can be considered viable and which contexts are conducive for enterprising. In contrast, social entrepreneurship represents another “extreme” within entrepreneurship education, redefining the role of businesses in society and emphasizing their capacity to address deep-rooted societal and environmental issues (Mongelli et al., 2019). Social entrepreneurship aims broaden students’ perspectives, encouraging them to reassess the motivations underlying their potential venture projects and nurture the development social-commercial hybrid organizations. However, social entrepreneurship education may face significant hurdles including the hybridization of such organizations (Plesa, 2022), challenges in fostering community-based initiatives (Dacin et al., 2011) and difficulties in integrating critical perspectives into students’ learning experiences.
Consequently, educators may be tightly bound by preformulated schemas of entrepreneurship, grapple with hybridity, fail to nurture “open” spaces for diverse and inclusive forms of entrepreneurship, overlook the potential for harnessing true creative capacities of individuals and collectives.
The paper proposes entrepreneuring as a propitious onto-epistemological underpinning for entrepreneurship education, embracing both practice and process perspectives; emphasizing open-endedness, continuous everyday (re)production of practices, improvisations and collective “becoming.”. An entrepreneuring approach in the classroom could thus be structured around four key tenets: (1) situatedness in space and time; (2) relatedness and open-endedness; (3) everyday creativity and play; and (4) reflexivity. Each of these pillars highlights different learning objectives, teaching methodologies and assessment practices.
Finally, by adopting an entrepreneuring approach to entrepreneurship education, greater emphasis can be placed on developing the intuition of students (Feldman & Worline, 2016; Raelin, 2007), understanding diverse entrepreneuring contexts and collectives, and enhancing the students’ ability to engage with and reflect on complex issues and open-endedness. The paper posits entrepreneuring as not only a conceptual attractor in scholarly research but also in entrepreneurship education (Gherardi, 2022; Steyaert, 2007). The notion of conceptual attractor in entrepreneuring scholarship is defined by Steyaert (2007) as a concept—such as entrepeneruing—that possesses the capacity to assemble a broad community of scholars to explore and experiment with diverse problematizations, methodologies and concepts. Ultimately, this paper posits that embracing an entrepreneuring perspective may create essential space for educators to innovate with diverse teaching methodologies, practices of knowing and learning. Consequently, I will explore the potential for positioning entrepreneuring as an “umbrella” concept that broadly socializes while incorporating both mainstream and social entrepreneurship. Entrepreneuring, as a socializing umbrella, in entrepreneurship education allows students to explore multiple, evolving, interdisciplinary potentialities of “entrepreneuring” (including entrepreneurship as a potential “becoming” pathway) and develop a deeper and more colorful repertoire of entrepreneuring possibilities.
The key contribution of this paper is to propose actionable pedagogical strategies and practices that establish entrepreneuring as a conceptual attractor within the classroom—embracing the diverse backgrounds and experiences of students, fostering community, and enhancing reflexivity and critical thinking.
Literature Review
The Establishing of the Field of Entrepreneurship Research and Its Influence on Entrepreneurship Education
In 1974, Karl Vesper convened a first meeting for scholars interested in the establishment of a new interest group: the Entrepreneurship Interest Group at the annual Academy of Management conference. The scholars who participated decided to form the group as part of the “Division of Business Policy and Planning”; meaning that the majority of scholars forming the group had a different primary academic “home,” for instance small business management or organizational behavior. Entrepreneurship as a distinct and legitimate scholarly field did not exist then. In 1977, research submissions to the Entrepreneurship Interest Group only counted 12 papers (Landström & Lindhe, 2016). The eighties and nineties marked a shift in entrepreneurship research with an important increase in research contributions and acknowledgement within academia of entrepreneurship as a potentially distinct, widely recognized scholarly and educational field.
Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneurship, and Entrepreneuring—Diverse Onto-Epistemologies.
Universality refers to the manner “entrepreneurship” education seems to perceive the world of business venturing by teaching the existence of “desirable” sequential actions or stages of venture development that will most probably lead a novice toward a “successful” venture outcome. As Higgins et al. (2019) suggest, the latter is reminiscent of a Taylor’s scientific method, whereby the entrepreneurship tasks need to be broken down into small and sequential steps deemed “rational” and “best”; then given to students to “replicate” in their own contexts and internalize such knowledge. Perhaps, the desire to showcase a sort of rationality, objectivity and universal patterns of being an entrepreneur and of organization development, eventually formatted as codified knowledge, may go back to the desire for entrepreneurship as scholarly and educational field to be seen as “scientifically” legitimate within academia and Higher Education, in a way that fits into the realm of already available subjects, shows necessary rigor and parsimony.
Methodological individualism relates to the tendency to represent the person of the “entrepreneur” as “hyper-muscular”—his experiences, his actions, the entrepreneur is the person who is in charge of leading the sequential steps of venture creation and development. Caution needs to be taken when later discussing a practice perspective of entrepreneurship, to not replicate such (often masculinized) thinking by matching the entrepreneur to “his practices” (Gherardi, 2022).
Creativity is viewed through the lens of intentionality and causality, either as something the individual possesses (creativity as trait—cf. creative founder) or as the outcome of highly thought through causal and sequential steps of venture development (creative venture).
Lastly, favoring a “pure” action-orientation that could push students to dive into entrepreneurship: cf. Disciplined Entrepreneurship (Aulet, 2013), may overly focus on the action of “getting things done” rapidly for achieving “success” and show the value of entrepreneurship as necessarily positive.
Therefore, such more “positivist” and “mainstream” ontology of entrepreneurship may run the risk of hindering the development of enterprising collectives/communities and entrepreneurial learning, by restraining the “possibilities” of who can be an entrepreneur, what venturing should be considered and what context can be propitious for enterprising. Educators may be tightly bound within the mainstream perspective, by preformulated schemas of entrepreneurship, fail to nurture more “open” spaces for diverse and inclusive forms of entrepreneurship and forgo the opportunity to harness the true creative capacities of communities and collectives.
As stipulated by Higgins et al. (2018, 2019), moving forward, entrepreneurship can no longer be understood as merely codified sequences of business creation activities but rather should be comprehended as a wider social phenomenon; which foregrounds unique pedagogical and onto-epistemological challenges to be discussed.
Hybridizing Entrepreneurship—Social Entrepreneurship Education
On the other end of the spectrum and in stark contrast to a mainstream understanding of entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship showcases a world of business creation that has first and foremost a social motivation, thus blending business efficiency with social effectiveness (Mongelli et al., 2019). While early scholarship in social entrepreneurship perpetuated methodological individualism by focusing on “heroic” social entrepreneurs and their inspiring venturing stories (Dacin et al., 2011); recent developments in social entrepreneurship scholarship highlight the importance of community, mission orientation, local embeddedness, and awareness (Bacq et al., 2022). The latter elements may point toward more complex and nuanced learnings of entrepreneurship and may be more aligned with today’s grand challenges.
Indeed, foregoing methodological individualism and moving toward community focused entrepreneurship may present an important step in entrepreneurship teaching and learning by widening the “definition” of entrepreneurship for students—for instance, in terms of who can be “entrepreneurial” and what entrepreneurship can look like. The entrepreneurship-community nexus then presents dynamic actors whose practices and enactments all contribute to shaping a common entrepreneurial mission (Bacq et al., 2022).
Additionally, social entrepreneurship education sheds light on the importance of being embedded locally and highlights social awareness as a cornerstone of venture development (Table 1). Due to the social mission of social entrepreneurship, students may be asked to be more attuned to their local environments: be able to understand in-depth and trace social problems, be aware of interactions between diverse actors, be good observers and listeners.
Moreover, the hybridization of social ventures makes them inherently fragile organizations, within which social and commercial logics and demands are constantly juxtaposed. Yet, this juxtaposition of contrasting logics may reveal to students much more complex processes of creativity, where enterprising involves the continuous recombination of seemingly contradictory elements brought in by diverse community members, which may ultimately be interrelated (Mongelli et al., 2019); providing a sort of resilience and showcasing a sort of transformative power for the community. The latter may be especially true when communities are marginalized and operating social ventures in midst of high resource scarcity.
However, social entrepreneurship education seems to leave educators to their own devices when trying to incorporate truly collective activities (are we teaching about, through, or with the enterprising communities), questioning and criticality into their classrooms (Moss & Gras, 2012). While learning about social entrepreneurship could answer many of the shortcomings of a more “mainstream” entrepreneurship education and widen the horizon of students, social entrepreneurship teaching and learning may be still missing honest conversations about the potential “dark-side” of entrepreneurship—pointing to the possibility that entrepreneurial action is not inherently beneficial or desirable when trying to solve societal, environmental, and even economic issues, thus lacking reflexive teaching and learning in the classroom. Additionally, hybridization and dehybridization (Plesa, 2022) as processes may be under appreciated in social entrepreneurship education as phenomena that demonstrate the constant dynamism and open-endedness of venturing.
Moving forward, Vedula et al. (2022) call for the bridging of entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship to better explore the complications and complexities of jointly focusing on environmental, social and economic issues; highlighting the need to have an overarching “umbrella” for the field: as a unique domain in social sciences. Therefore, I believe this consolidation of multiple entrepreneurship perspectives is “ripe” and should start within the classroom, hence the potentiality of exploring “entrepreneuring” as not solely a conceptual attractor within scholarly research but also within education.
The Promise of Entrepreneuring
Hannon (2005) aims to understand how educational philosophies may be contextualized within entrepreneurship-education; the author stipulates that the most prominent philosophy applied to entrepreneurship is behaviorist. Competences are codified within the course design and delivery, with the aim to have learners achieve a certain assessable standard within a preordained frame of what is considered entrepreneurship. It is then a seemingly attractive approach to educators as one only needs to assess whether the individual can be deemed “capable” at the end of term—did the individual acquire the behaviors and skills that were promoted in-class, and not engage in others that were discouraged—having then clear delimitations for the educators themselves but also being quantifiable outcomes for potential external actors. However, if entrepreneurship, is presented as a cornerstone, for economic dynamism and highly valuable for solving our times greatest socio-environmental challenges, would such highly generalized and quantified approach suffice?
An initial response and significant leap in entrepreneurship teaching and learning emerged with “enterprising education.” Enterprising education widened the horizon of what entrepreneurship means by suggesting that being enterprising is not inherently linked to business creation—enterprising individuals then can come from all walks of life and undertake all sorts of initiatives (Caird, 1990; Crammond, 2019). Yet, early iterations of enterprising education did resemble more mainstream understandings of entrepreneurship insomuch, they placed emphasis on individual skills and characteristics people needed to acquire in order to be “enterprising.” The latter could lead to a similarly behaviorist form of education that would over-generalize, codify and perpetuate a certain number of desirable skills/characteristics. Nevertheless, enterprising education evolved and flourished to include: (1) value creation beyond business profit; (2) learning as exploratory process; (3) self-discovery and affective learning; (4) focus on intersubjective creativity; and (5) leaner and process-centered evaluation (Draycott & Rae, 2011). Such aforementioned advancement can be considered as precursor for developing an entrepreneuring teaching and learning. Entrepreneuring furthers and completes enterprising education by emphasizing contextual awareness in both space and time, by allowing students to embrace mistakes, avoid “solutionist” perspectives and be critical of their own and others’ endeavors.
Educators could then consider exploring entrepreneuring as the onto-epistemological underpinning of entrepreneurship education. Entrepreneuring combines both practice and process ontologies and epistemologies (Champenois et al., 2020; Chiles et al., 2017; Hjorth, 2014; Steyaert, 2007). Process studies aim to comprehend how and why phenomena evolve over time (Langley, 1999); the nature of being in the world is intrinsically dynamic and reality is understood as brought into being every moment (Cloutier & Langley, 2020). In addition, practice perspectives (Nicolini, 2017; Schatzki, 2001) are inherently processual—the world is seen as an ongoing, partly routinized and recurrent accomplishment; and imply that practices are situated occurrences in time and space. In this perspective, entrepreneuring comprehends situated and temporally embedded everyday processes of new organization creation (including experiments with novel organizational forms), involving assemblages of practices from diverse actors (not solely from entrepreneurs) (Gherardi, 2022).
Entrepreneuring education implies teaching how entrepreneurial practices come into being while interacting with other situated practices, how these entrepreneurial practices get resourced within a collective and the daily creativity involved in resourcing such practices, and how practices are (temporarily) stabilized and are coupled with reflexivity (Gherardi, 2022). More attention is paid to developing the intuition of students (Feldman & Worline, 2016), to the consequentiality and tentativeness (Raelin, 2007) of daily entrepreneurial activities, and to their relatedness with and embeddedness within diverse social practices and contexts. Embracing entrepreneuring may help to avoid the short-term quantifying of entrepreneurial venturing post-graduation, and nurture more long-term and “soft” impacts—such as the enhanced sensitivity and reflexivity of students to their contexts and their collective ability to embrace their intuition when approaching open-ended and complex issues.
Indeed, the main pillars of an entrepreneuring ontology may be seen as, spatial and temporal situatedness; relatedness and open-endedness (embracing collective becoming); everyday creativity and play; and reflexivity (Table 1).
Spatial and temporal situatedness enables to conceptualize entrepreneuring as deeply enmeshed in a unique contextual continuity in space and time; the latter consideration being one of the key concepts that helps forego methodological individualism. Indeed, each actor interlinked in entrepreneuring is momentarily relating to one another in time and space while continuously reproducing diverse sets of practices with prior historical and contextual anchoring. Relatedness and open-endedness (collective becoming) refers to the ongoing efforts underlying one’s becoming as “entrepreneur”—no one is an entrepreneur from the get go; people’s constant performative being as entrepreneur is tightly interlinked with a plethora of other social processes and practices performed at every moment. Organization creation is a collective flow of action that involves collective resourcing practices of the new organization. Creativity is less about creating something “new” and “innovative,” and less of a final product (or objective) in and of itself. Creativity is neither only the “logical” consequence of a “creative” mind. Creativity is tightly linked with serendipity, improvisation (trial and error) and playfulness as a “mundane” everyday process entrepreneuring collectives are continuously engaged in. Lastly, reflexivity is a cornerstone of entrepreneuring insofar reflexivity includes continuous awareness of: (1) one’s own social standing; (2) the assumptions that permeate tools being used and of surroundings; and (3) the wider assumptions of a sector/industry/domain. Entrepreneuring is no blank canvas (deprived of social connectedness) or blanket solution for all societal and/or environmental issues; entrepreneuring then does not bring overall wellbeing to all social groups, the natural environment and may even be harmful.
The book by Neck et al. (2014) entitled “Teaching entrepreneurship: A Practice-Based Approach” makes a significant first step in shaping a more “open-ended,” lifetime learning oriented and inclusive approach to teaching entrepreneurship, including concrete suggestions for the classroom. The authors conceptualize teaching entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship itself as a method rather than purely standardized and rationalized content. Entrepreneurship as method then represents a set of skills and techniques that enable students to develop practices that propel them to think and act more entrepreneurially. A method goes beyond merely knowing and talking, it involves using, applying and acting based on a set of assumptions that forms a portfolio of practices propitious to creating. Nevertheless, while the book makes significant contributions in conceptualizing practices of play, empathy, creation, and experimentation, and shows concrete in-class activities to develop each set of practices, there may be a need to further these conceptualizations. Entrepreneuring should be envisioned not solely as a potential method for thinking and acting, but more importantly as a malleable form of socialization that helps students develop a portfolio of practices and nurtures the creative capacity of communities, thereby transcending individualism and embracing interdisciplinary collaboration. It then highlights the transformational power of entrepreneuring by embracing the normative and experimental nature of everyday evolving practices.
Core Tenets of Entrepreneuring and Their Implications for the Classroom
Situatedness in Space and Time
Learning Objectives
Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneurship, and Entrepreneuring—Teaching Implications.
Teaching Methods and Activities
Contrasting with a more mainstream approach to entrepreneurship, within which the learning objectives of showcasing business venturing as universal and sequential steps are rendered possible through learning activities such as drawing up a business model canvas, analyzing parsimonious business venturing cases and listening to successful entrepreneur guest speakers, in order for students to apply the knowledge gained from these activities to their own context and have examples of what to follow for “success” and how to “be.” On the other hand, entrepreneuring similarly to social entrepreneurship embraces the “here and now” and may widen the “toolbox” for more “localized” teaching and learning. The paper will then propose in the following sections some teaching methods and activities inspired by empirical cases in the literature (Campbell, 2021; Jack & Anderson, 2002; Katila et al., 2020) and historical accounts (Berliner, 1983; Grossman, 1983; Roy & Laird, 1983).
“I spy entrepreneuring”—storytelling sessions. Before the session, students will receive a sample repertoire of texts and journal articles that situates entrepreneuring in diverse spatial and temporal contexts; these texts should have as objective to raise questions by students in regard to diversity of “locations” where entrepreneuring can bloom and the differing meanings/shapes entrepreneuring may take in diverse temporal and spatial localities. The aim is then to dislodge perhaps firmly held beliefs in the classroom that entrepreneurship can only equate to business venturing as showcased by the example of “startups.” One may then point students to read about entrepreneuring within rural Scottish communities (Jack & Anderson, 2002) and/or historical accounts such as chapters regarding entrepreneuring in the Soviet Union (Berliner, 1983; Grossman, 1983; Roy & Laird, 1983)—be it how factory workers or farmers stretched their room for maneuver in their daily activities, how the state apparatus itself nudged ministries and officials to undertake entrepreneurial activities. Perhaps, the readings may be divided into two different repertoires (dividing the class into two groups) and allow students to discuss in class what surprised/intrigued them the most in terms of the diverse entrepreneuring they have read about; possibly inviting students to collectively draw out different definitions of entrepreneuring.
A second part and perhaps assignment/homework for the session could ask students to explore a spatial and temporal context that is of interest to them—be it through reading/ observing/experiencing it (e.g., going to an event, local market, community group/enterprise/coworking space, natural reserve), through historical accounts/books, through other documentation and mediums (such as reports, press releases, news articles, videos, movies, art studios/exhibitions). The students will be then asked to write a short story of entrepreneuring as they have “sensed” it (or audio record themselves telling their story). The short story can be written/told from their own point of view or any other point of views they wish to highlight—and describe what they sensed as entrepreneuring (or even lack thereof) (processes and practices) as embedded and evolving in space and time of their chosen context. The next class, a few students may have the opportunity to tell the class about their short stories and the class may debrief their experiences/feelings/insights together, along the lines of: what has drawn you to your chosen context (what did you sense that intrigued you)? What did you expect, what assumptions did you have about the chosen context before exploring it more in depth? What definition of entrepreneuring would you propose within your short story? How did you feel during the writing of the story, what insights were important for you to convey?
Assessment Practices
The assessment may be anchored in recognizing and valuing the learner’s openness and curiosity in understanding a chosen spatial and temporal context—for instance, the explanation of the student in regard to what led them to choose or define certain situated activities as a form of entrepreneuring, how fine-grained are their narratives of the context and the richness of their accounts ( what senses and feelings are tapped into), how much can the student be attentive to what they are observing/reading/experiencing and how attuned are they to their own senses, how well can the student discuss with others their own conceptualizations of entrepreneuring. The students may be encouraged to follow up with journaling their experiences, feelings and insights after the sessions. The short stories can be bound together as the class own repertoire of “colorful,” multi-disciplinary, and diverse entrepreneuring; not forgetting, that the activity in itself allows the students go through an experience of creation.
Relatedness and Open-Endedness (Becoming)
Learning Objectives
A more “mainstream” approach to entrepreneurship focuses on the development of entrepreneurial “traits” (Zhao & Seibert, 2006), centering the entrepreneur’s experiences, capabilities and sequential actions as determining factors in venture development; accounts that are often “masculinized” (his capabilities, his actions, his experiences, etc.) (Bourne & Calás, 2013) and project a hyper-muscular view of the entrepreneur who is put into the driver’s seat (Gherardi, 2022). Similarly, early papers in social entrepreneurship centered around inspirational stories of “heroic” entrepreneurs (Dacin et al., 2011), yet social entrepreneurship scholarship has evolved to embrace a more communitarian view (Bacq et al., 2022) while still grappling with the apparent dichotomies of social-commercial (de)hybridization (Mongelli et al., 2019; Plesa, 2022). Instead, entrepreneuring emphasizes and embraces processuality, specifically how a wide range of interacting practices from diverse actors may be (re)produced and evolve over time. Entrepreneuring shows resources not as immobile/immutable entities to be sought out, acquired and controlled, but as continuously changing and malleable dynamics in interaction flows (Keating et al., 2014; Kosmynin & Ljunggren, 2023). The students have as learning objectives to develop their intuition in observing their environment and the diverse interactions that can take place and are interlinked with entrepreneuring (Butcher, 2018). Students are brought to accept the entrepreneurial being as a constant process of “becoming,” by understanding the processes of social acceptance and rejection involved.
Teaching Methods and Activities
Recurrent Observation of Complex Social Settings
One of the most valuable ways in which students can attune their sensitivity and intuition to their surroundings and to notice diverse interacting practices, is direct and sustained observation exercises. Students then may be trained in “observation” as typically learnt by scholars in social sciences (Fixson, 2014; Musante & DeWalt, 2010). In the chapter of Musante and DeWalt (2010) learning to observe involves: (1) mapping the social and physical scene, being able to see the big picture but also being attentive to detail; (2) engaging in active listening and being able to enter into conversation, memorizing conversational details; (3) bettering oneself in taking more and more fine-grained notes of situations and phenomena; and (4) when conducting sustained observations, fostering curiosity and being able to see routines from novel angles. Developing students’ observation skills may not only improve their ability to be more attentive to actions, interlinking practices among and routines of salient others, but also enable them to decenter “entrepreneurship” from being an “entrepreneur’s” activity to seeing entrepreneuring in its complexity and wholeness. Students can be assigned to “observation teams” and asked to spend two afternoons in a coworking setting (perhaps, the university itself has an incubator, accelerator, or venture builder to which students can get ethical approval and be directed for their observation sessions; students also need to be taught about ethical behavior when observing human subjects) (Butcher, 2018). Each student will conduct the observation of teams present in the coworking setting individually, having a journal to take notes and sketches in. Before, the observation task, students can be asked to submit an observation guide, detailing a potential “plan” for their observation, for instance: including sections about what they wish to take account of (if possible): for example, who initiates interactions, who speaks to whom, what is emphasized and discussed, what mood individuals are in and how it influences their gestures and interactions, reflexive thought of how they feel in this physical and social setting, etc. After the observation sessions, groups will be asked to return one more time to the coworking setting and “just experience and feel” it, this allows students to round out their insights, remain open and curious without the pressure of “being on” (Musante & DeWalt, 2010). Back in class, the students will be asked to convene with their respective groups and discuss their experiences with the aim of giving a short presentation about their experiences, learnings, and feelings at the end of the session. The presentations can be an opportunity for the class as a whole to discuss the key takeaways from the exercise: how did you perceive the different individuals and their roles during your observation (this relates to process of becoming—the biases, social acceptance/rejection highlighted)? What do these experiences teach you about finding new insights? How did people relate to one another and how did their interactions evolve? How did individuals relate to their physical space and what their body language communicates? How did you feel in the setting, and how did this feeling differ from your teammates? The presentations and discussion in class can be followed up by a self-reflective journaling assignment.
Guest speakers—with differing focus—When guest speakers are invited to present their undertakings and their personal careers as entrepreneurs, often, the focus is put either on their persona as an “entrepreneur” or a “social entrepreneur”—chosen by educators as to embody the parsimonious teaching content and desirable mindsets, presented as an example to be followed; and/or on the post-hoc “rationalized” and sequential accounts of the venture’s development. Such sessions then foster learnings that reinforce the theoretical components of the curriculum—namely, add illustrations that represent the sequential phases of venture development and how an entrepreneur ought to make decisions and behave. The learnings are meant to be directly applicable and “followed” by students as a “good example” in their own personal contexts.
On the other hand, entrepreneuring may present a different purpose for inviting guest speakers, coupled with varied learning objectives. Firstly, if one understands entrepreneuring as a meshwork of diverse practices that are being (re)produced over time; then it is crucial to overcome individualism and present to students a wide array of actors’ practices that may overtly and/or covertly contribute to venture development. The latter, may be achieved by inviting diverse speakers from varied institutions, be it: venture founders, policy-makers and representatives of governmental offices from various national/regional levels, representatives of financial institutions, representatives non-governmental organizations and grassroot organizations, representatives from intermediary organizations such as trade associations and consultants, representatives of supporting organizations such as venture studios/incubators/accelerators/coworking spaces, representatives from technology transfer office, representatives from intergovernmental institutions, researchers, etc. The rational is then to bring multiple voices to the classroom, who are all part of and/or have a stake in entrepreneuring. Secondly, the learning “ask” from students should emphasize: how the actions of the speaker are related to the actions of salient others in achieving temporary milestones? What contestations and/or collective settlements are brought forward? What practices make up such temporary collective settlements and what practices represent sources of tensions? Understanding the latter may slowly enable students to view entrepreneuring as an inherently collective endeavor, which is dynamic, malleable and non-linear over time.
Assessment Practices
In terms of the observation exercise, students may be assessed on the full “paper trail” of their observation exercise. The starting point of such “paper trail” should be the observation guide that students submit before going to do their observation. The observation guide should elaborate on a detailed plan for their upcoming observation. The latter is then attached to the initial fieldnotes they have gathered during their observation (as an annex)—which may be comprised of quickly written notes, drawings and context mappings they manage to do while in the “field.” The core of the assessment is the written-up account of the observation and the group-work in-class. The written-up account of each student could act as a conversation starter in their respective groups and prepare them to present diverse takeaways and reflections incorporated in their learnings from the observation task. The student may look at this “trail” as a portfolio—where they can express their assumptions, expectations and concerns before the observation—what they expect to observe and what they will try to pay attention to; their initial fieldnote may reveal their creative trial-and-errors while navigating and mapping a new social space ; the written up account may serve them as space for self-reflection , reflection on their experiences, emotions and challenges of observing/mapping/understanding dynamic human interactions. The group-work element and presentations may enable students to share and learn from others—showcasing how the same setting can be seen and be felt differently by diverse others, embrace the richness of accounts presented by others and foster openness to others’ point of views. Sessions with guest speakers can further attune the students’ awareness of and attentiveness to the multiple practices present in entrepreneuring; reinforcing the idea that entrepreneuring is a dynamic and broad collective endeavor.
Everyday Creativity and Play
Learning Objectives
Mainstream entrepreneurship teaching posits creativity as being either an innate characteristic of the person: “the entrepreneur,” or the outcome of entrepreneurial activities, the latter assumes that successful undertakings are the ones that are creative and failure could be partly explained by lack of creativity. Eventually, creativity is implied to be a zero-sum game, either one and/or the product has it or does not. Social entrepreneurship is more aligned with an entrepreneuring conceptualization of creativity, as social entrepreneurship empathizes processes of bricolage from scarce resources. Social entrepreneurship, however, presents a more positive/optimistic view of entrepreneurial bricolage, which binds together passion, purpose, and profit to solve societal and/or environmental challenges and foster public good (Vedula et al., 2022). Entrepreneuring may be more neutral in its perspective on creative processes and show students that creativity is situated in everyday and often mundane processes; taking much less grandiose and tangible dimensions. Creativity is then tightly linked with serendipity, everyday and mundane trial-and-error processes and daily improvisations by the collective. When looking into how creativity is understood within an entrepreneuring conceptualization, empirical cases within entrepreneuring scholarly papers showcase creativity as: a feeling of “in-betweenness,” one’s engagement in everyday dissembling and improvisational reassembling of identities, social positions and relationships with salient others (Garcia-Lorenzo et al., 2018); ongoing learning journeys through the continuous (re)production of social practices, which includes perceptive-sensorial engagement, relations with others, emotions and embodied navigation through social spaces (Vogt et al., 2022); “tinkering” over time through small everyday work practices (which can be sending emails, filling out applications, etc.) and other such small moves (Barinaga, 2017). Therefore, the learning objectives may direct students to be attuned to the wider organizational context—the everyday (un)coordinated practices that are enacted by diverse actors and thus the sparks of improvisations and everyday creativity they may bring forward; develop students’ intuition and openness to engage in trial-and-error processes and improvisation, to cultivate their curiosity in everyday tasks.
Teaching Methods and Activities
Cases differently, experiential learning and journaling/portfolio building—It may be time to extend and build a different repertoire of cases for entrepreneuring, possibly inspired by the empirical cases present in the entrepreneuring literature (some examples: Barinaga, 2017; Garcia-Lorenzo et al., 2018; Vogt et al., 2022). Such cases could present more fine-grained accounts of entrepreneuring processes in varied undertakings, ranging from new venture development to policy-making; thus, catering to interdisciplinary audiences. Indeed, writing and building such repertoire of cases could be an interdisciplinary initiative from higher education institutions, also presenting a highly valuable meeting point for diverse students and faculty to meet and collaborate. Cases could be rendered livelier for students by integrating some sort of teamwork or role-play element. For instance, Barinaga (2017) details how she navigated step-by-step the daily hurdles of setting up a social venture project aimed at reducing the stigma around immigrant neighborhoods in Sweden. Her detailed accounts present small everyday work practices whereby, for example, she had to contact arts and crafts teachers in the project area, convince the teachers to join her idea of collective mural painting and go through a back-and-forth with them to somehow insert the activity into their fall curriculum. The narrative goes on to talk about how precisely the mural painting was organized and set up, how the different individuals participated and reacted. It can be then that such “tinkering” empirical insights can be turned into cases, and presented to the class as an opportunity to work together in regard to how such a social venture project (or any other project) may unfold—each student can be given a role (as people from the social initiative team, municipality representatives, local teachers, non-governmental organization staff, etc.) and “play” out possible pathways in which their aims and practices may be developed in conjunctions with the aims and practices of others in the game. One crucial point being that students may be not assessed on whether they find the right answer to a case; but how they engage with others in trial-and-error processes and improvise to be able to present certain solution among potential others. Cases should then be utilized insofar they showcase diverse alternatives of entrepreneuring and/or give opportunities for students to “play” with complex problems as teams.
Other “play” exercises might include, for example, already popular games such as the “marshmallow tower” by George (2014). Which involves to give each student group 20 sticks of spaghetti, one marshmallow, one yard of tape and one yard of string; each group is then asked to build a free-standing tower in 18 minutes that can support the weight of a whole marshmallow. While some version of this game stipulates to give a standing ovation to the winning team with the highest free-standing tower, I believe the main takeaway from this exercise should not be about winning but rather present an opportunity for students to experience continuous improvisation. Improvisations that are performed within a team setting and where students have to build upon the small tweaks done by others and collectively go through the trial-and-error processes. In this sense, providing a fun and safe space for experimentation is more important than winning the challenge; the conclusion from the in-class debrief being the constant learning one can get from building upon seemingly small iterations and tries, from embracing failures as stepping stones.
Lastly, if the program requires from the student to undertake their own entrepreneurial projects or intern/shadow entrepreneurial undertakings; these activities should comprehend journaling/portfolio building, enabling students to make sense of the diverse practices present in their surroundings, sensitize themselves to the spaces’ sociopolitical dimensions, record their daily improvisations (tinkerings) and trial-and-errors as a “trail” of their becoming in the entrepreneurial space. Students can also express themselves in sketches, drawings and write down their reflexive thoughts and questions regarding their own and others activities, the materials/tools they are engaging with. Such journals/portfolios are then an open space for students to explore their own unique context in terms of local characteristics and histories; also increasing the relevance of entrepreneuring for the students and foster internal motivation. On practical terms, the journals/portfolios could take the shape of scrapbooks, distributed to each student at the beginning of the program; asking them to complete at least one page per day while interning or shadowing undertakings and/or building their own projects.
Assessment Practices
In this section, it is more important than ever to highlight the need for educators to not solely focus on outcomes. In each of these aforementioned activities, students should be assessed on their contribution to teamwork processes—possibly through practices of self-evaluation and team evaluations, their willingness to undertake trial-and-error learning processes, their openness to improvisations, the consistency and care they channel into completing/filling in their respective journals/portfolios. In a sense, the key aim is to foster students’ curiosity, valuing errors and each small iteration as part of learning.
Reflexivity
Teaching Objectives
Perhaps it is no longer viable to refer to Zuckerberg’s motto: “Move fast and break things” (Taneja, 2019), a saying often reflected in mainstream entrepreneurship education, pushing students to hastily jump into action and “get things done.” The latter perspective carries the assumption that entrepreneurial undertakings are inherently of positive value to society and the environment. In a sense, by following sequential steps toward a successful endgame—as some sort of venture exit—students are implicitly taught to view themselves as “in control” and develop tunnel vision towards venture success (which is often quantified in financial terms and/or market reach). Additionally, this perspective this perspective overlooks the emotional and psychological challenges entrepreneurial processes may pose for students as they encounter social hurdles and rejections. Social entrepreneurship education is inherently more environmentally and socially aware through its key mission of fostering “solutions” for the public good. However, the heightened optimism and perception of control social entrepreneurship may create, could overshadow the possible unintended harms caused by social entrepreneurship initiatives (Vedula et al., 2022). The latter potential for harm, questions the role of businesses in society—the nature and extent of their interference with societal and/or environmental issues (Nyberg, 2021; Scherer et al., 2006). Entrepreneuring, on the other hand, is anchored in practices of reflexivity. Reflexivity encompasses multiple dimensions (Sklaveniti & Steyaert, 2020) and puts forward the following learning objectives for students—cultivating students’ awareness of: (1) own social standing; (2) the assumptions that permeate tools being used and of surroundings; (3) the wider assumptions of a sector/industry/domain they engage with. Students then should be taught that entrepreneurship is no blank canvas (deprived of social connectedness) or blanket solution for all societal and/or environmental issues—entrepreneurship does not bring overall wellbeing to all social groups or the natural environment, and may even be harmful.
Teaching Methods and Activities
Reflective practices should permeate the full length of an entrepreneuring course, either through educators leaving time at the end of each session for students to engage in reflective practices or assign reflective exercises after each session. It may be beneficial and more inclusive to give students the option of choosing a preferred medium, which they would want to use for their reflexive exercises—this could take the form of journals, scrapbooks, a portfolio of mixed-media, online blogging, audio/video journals, etc. The latter may be important as the type of media chosen may energize students to actually engage with the exercise in a manner that feels the most motivating and authentic to them. Educators may introduce reflective exercise at the beginning of the course, explaining its importance in terms of learning about: the limits and potential dangers of entrepreneuring—for instance, as Barinaga (2017) reflected upon how her social venturing project may have further perpetuated stigmatization practices of immigrant neighborhoods in Sweden; sensitize students to the diverse social practices that mesh together in entrepreneuring over time, enabling them to understand their own evolving social positioning (power dynamics, Dey & Steyaert, 2016; emancipation (Goss et al., 2011); raising awareness about the non-neutrality of tools and artifacts used in entrepreneuring and the assumptions they may carry with them; fostering students understanding of the underlying assumptions of a sector/industry/domain. The course provides the students with, if possible, the materials for this journaling/portfolio-building activity—be it the colored paper, pencils, paint sets, journals, scrapbooks, tape, scissors, etc. Educators could nudge students’ reflexive practices either by giving a guiding question for each session or by suggesting (optional) them to pursue the self-reflection by writing a poem, making a collage, painting it, etc. (Greene, 2014, p. 273). Additionally, students should be encouraged to maintain a logbook during any internship, shadowing activity and own venture project, as a medium for jotting down their daily questions in regard to their lived experiences, map out their understanding of socioenvironmental spaces they find themselves in, make sense of their emotions, describe their learnings and keep track of any trial-and-error processes; comprehend their evolving assumptions about the practices they or others engage in.
Assessment Practices
In contrast with solely assessing output in forms of a final venture project, a “successful” internship or assignments (i.e., grading business models), reflective exercises put attention on the processes and everydayness of entrepreneuring. In this sense, it is not about whether venturing is done the right way, but about whether the student can undertake deep reflection processes, cultivate their own curiosity and ask questions in regard to what they and others do, what they or others assume. Ultimately, educators through entrepreneuring assessments should be focused on the quality of and efforts the students dedicate to understanding the open-ended processes of entrepreneuring (valuing “trail”); placing value into students’ improvisations, standing up from errors and self-reflections. By making reflexive practices a habit for students, such practices may not only enable students to be more mindful and better cope with their emotions, but also nurture bourgeoning entrepreneuring that is more empathetic, inclusive and creative in its processes.
Discussion: Could Educators Consolidate Diverse Forms of Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneuring within the Classroom?
While on one “extreme,” a more mainstream understanding of entrepreneurship defines entrepreneurship in sequential steps and focuses on a “successful” endgame (Fayolle et al., 2016); on the other “extreme” social entrepreneurship evolved to focus on community-led bricolage and paints a highly optimistic picture of fostering public good through entrepreneurial initiatives. In light of these latter “extreme” conceptualizations, entrepreneuring unites and is characterized by open-ended processes and a meshwork of diverse practices; and although these conceptualizations seem to highly differ at first glance, they may not be exclusive and could even reinforce one another.
Thus far, practice and process-based approaches to teaching entrepreneurship/enterprising/entrepreneuring formulated the need to develop students’ intuition alongside traditional academic and conceptual knowledge, with the aim to nurture students’ situated and embodied insights (Johannisson, 2016). Partnerships with industry have been stipulated as vital in fostering a university environment that encourages students’ propensity for “action” and develop their affective capabilities; possibly better students’ networking and social skills (Johannisson, 2016). Going as far as to suggest the need for researchers/educators to themselves undertake venturing initiatives as a form of enactive research/teaching approach, stipulating that enactive research/teaching may enable researchers/educators to better capture, through their own experiences, the cognitive and emotive processes of entrepreneuring (Johannisson, 2011). Johannisson (2016) then calls for “bilingual teachers” that are readily able to translate between theoretical and conceptual knowledge, on one side and action-oriented and situated knowledge on the other. Additionally, the comprehensive book by Neck et al. (2014) suggest experiential learning as the only manner in which students can “learn the entrepreneurship method,” the latter referring to series of practices present in entrepreneurship; indeed, most exercises written in the book require the students to “take the driver’s seat,” be “hands-on” and partake in “action-based” activities.
Nevertheless, while papers such as Johannisson (2011, 2016) offer clear guidelines for shaping entrepreneuring higher education programs/institutions—be it through extensive industry partnerships or “bilingual teaching”; and books making such valuable contribution as the book of Neck et al. (2014) which suggests a wide range of experiential learning activities centering play, empathy, creation and experimentation; much remains to be said regarding how educators may make sense of entrepreneuring and diverse forms of entrepreneurship together; going beyond thinking about opposing methods, seemingly pertaining to different “schools.” Extant scholarly work aiming to unite diverse entrepreneurship conceptualizations is still limited and solely focus on building theoretical bridges between different forms of entrepreneurship education (Hägg & Jones, 2021). This paper contributes to the latter scholarly discussion by placing the student back into a “united” entrepreneurship education; bringing to the table concrete teaching practices and methods which can be used in the classroom.
There could be then significant value in broadly socializing students under the wider umbrella of “entrepreneuring”—entrepreneuring then is also seen as a conceptual attractor (Steyaert, 2007) within the classroom. Entrepreneuring as conceptual attractor was first formulated within the realm of entrepreneurship research, to open space for conceptual and methodological experimentation (Gherardi, 2022; Steyaert, 2007). Entrepreneuring as conceptual attractor could then be similarly valuable within the classroom as it highlights social ontologies of relatedness and becoming, possibly further inspiring and enabling educators to embrace diverse ontologies, epistemologies, practices of knowing and teaching. Thus, open up space within which “entrepreneuring” and different forms of “entrepreneurship” could be consolidated to provide an enriching learning experience to diverse and interdisciplinary students; including harnessing students’ creativity, respective contexts and interests; as well as fostering their sensitivity to complex and open-ended issues. Entrepreneuring anchored within such ontologies of relatedness could include entrepreneurship insofar it sees both entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship as possible pathways among others. For example, entrepreneurship with its stepwise venturing approach and heightened attention on “successful exists” presents one way of relating to salient others and “becoming” as entrepreneurial collective. Albeit, broadly socializing students under the wider umbrella of entrepreneuring may require educators to take the “organizing context” much more seriously in their teaching practices and content, defined by Johannisson (2011, p. 142) as “an interactively enacted shared reality that, historically and culturally embedded, manifests and reforms itself by way of personal, face-to-face exchange.” It is through these situated dynamics, (de)stabilizing of routines, everyday small movements, reactions within the organizing context that certain entrepreneurship or other diverse entrepreneuring potentialities are rendered possible and can be brought forward as “exemplar” within the classroom. In other words, it is up to the educators and educator teams (hopefully interdisciplinary) to decide about which contexts, “relatedness” (including practices) within these contexts and “becomings” they shed light upon, how diverse are the evolving social arrangements/assemblages they are willing to introduce and discuss with their classrooms. Entrepreneuring provides the foundation and canvas for the educators to “paint” such entrepreneurial assemblages and potentialities unto.
Ultimately rendering entrepreneuring a propitious terrain for exploring a wide range of potentialities; and socializing students to embrace open-ended, diverse, interdisciplinary and creative processes that could not only bring economic prosperity to nations, but also be at the forefront of possibilities when meaningfully engaging with critical social and environmental grand challenges (George et al., 2016).
Conclusion
This paper seeks to stimulate discussions around onto-epistemological positionings in entrepreneurship education, by exploring how diverse conceptualization of entrepreneurship could be united and integrated within the classroom. Extant literature aiming to consolidate different entrepreneurship conceptualizations only did so by bridging theoretical assumptions (Hägg & Jones, 2021), yet without providing concrete teaching and learning practices and methods. This paper then contributes to entrepreneurship education literature by going beyond merely bridging different theoretical perspectives (Hägg & Jones, 2021) and details concrete teaching and learning methods and practices for fostering entrepreneuring within the classroom.
The paper posits entrepreneuring as a more inclusive onto-epistemological perspective for entrepreneurship education, founded in both process and practice perspectives, which emphasizes the continuous meshing of diverse practices, everyday improvisations, and open-endedness. Building upon the entrepreneuring onto-epistemology the paper stipulates four pillars for teaching and learning, including concrete teaching and learning methods and practices: (1) situatedness in space and time—showcasing how diverse contexts can be propitious for entrepreneuring collectives and that multiple identities exists; (2) relatedness and open-endedness (becoming)—stipulating that all entrepreneuring is a collective undertaking continuously evolving over time; (3) everyday creativity and play—puts emphasis on the often overlooked mundane daily creative processes and the importance of trial-and-error, instead of focusing on traits and outcomes; (4) reflexivity - engaging students in reflexive practice to better understand their interconnectedness with others, their environments, the tools they use and solutions they develop, eventually, nuancing entrepreneuring as not an inherently positive and beneficial activity. As key contribution, the aforementioned four pillars are then discussed in the paper through learning objectives, teaching and assessment practices they may bring forward. The question then remains what is there to gain for the field of entrepreneurship education by adopting an entrepreneuring conceptualization?
The paper aims to inspire educators to think about entrepreneuring as a conceptual attractor (Gherardi, 2022; Steyaert, 2007) that gives space for educators to explore multiple definitions of entrepreneuring, experiment with teaching methods and contents, embrace diverse knowing and learning practices; entrepreneuring then presents the opportunity to serve as a socializing umbrella for students, enabling them to develop their intuition regarding diverse potentialities of entrepreneuring, embrace community and enhance their conscientiousness to grand challenges (George et al., 2016).
Limitations and Avenues for Future Research
A key limitation of the paper may arise when implementing an entrepreneuring course within an already established institutional framework, such as in a higher education institution. Indeed, the implementation of a more experimental entrepreneuring course may not be an easy feat for educators, as it may be more challenging to embed such a course into the existing institutional infrastructure of the school. Additionally, such a course could challenge existing assumptions and expectations of students, further complicating its implementation.
For example, in terms of assessment practices, established entrepreneurship programs could pressure an entrepreneuring course to adhere to standardized assessment practices, including grading; favoring assessment and grading practices that value the direct application of learnt content/materials and which emphasize quantifiable entrepreneurial outcomes—venture successes. Furthermore, students can experience difficulties when dealing with assessment and grading discontinuities compared to their other classes; having been used to the extrinsic motivating factor of being graded on outcome and the “certainty” of a grade being the reflection of their capabilities. In contrast, a more experimental entrepreneuring course may downplay the importance of grades and focus on the more intrinsic rewards of learning from mistakes and open-ended experimentation.
Consequently, future empirical research could explore how entrepreneuring courses can be embedded into existing institutional contexts; shedding light on necessary compromises in their implementation and how such embedding processes could support or erode some aspects of an entrepreneuring onto-epistemology. Moreover, empirical studies could examine the influence of students’ epistemological beliefs (Hardy & Tolhurst, 2014) on the in-class implementation of an entrepreneuring onto-epistemology. All learning experiences are co-constructed through teacher-student interactions. As such, students’ epistemological beliefs regarding how they come to understand entrepreneuring, how knowledge of entrepreneuring is constructed and how such knowledge should be evaluated, will inevitably be subject to negotiation within the dynamics of teacher-student relations. This process may in turn reveal diverse sociocultural iterations of an entrepreneuring onto-epistemology.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author is truly grateful to the guest editors Alain Fayolle, Kati Suomi, Katriina Heljakka, Michaela Loi and Francisco Linan for curating such valuable special issue. The author would like to specifically thank Alain Fayolle and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful guidance and constructive feedback throughout the review process. The author is also deeply indebted to Anne Mesny and the Arpège Research Centre of HEC Montréal, including the Centre’s PhD Working Group, for their continuous support, funding and encouragement during the development of the paper.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received financial support from the Arpège Research Centre of HEC Montréal for the publication of this article.
Ethical Statement
This study did not require ethical approval.
