Industry and Higher Education

The paper argues that there is a need to move away from the conventional focus of entrepreneurship education on new venture management, business plans and growth and innovation, to a broader concept based on an understanding of the way entrepreneurs live and learn. Seven challenges are proposed in this respect: (1) that of creating the ‘way of life’ of the entrepreneur; (2) the sharing of culture and values; (3) supporting the development of behaviours, attributes and skills; (4) designing the entrepreneurial organization; (5) developing the learning to learn capacity; (6) being sensitive to the demands of different contexts; and (7) adding value to existing ways of learning. The paper concludes that meeting these challenges cannot easily be achieved within the existing structure, values and beliefs of business schools, and that new organizations are needed within a university context.

Findings from research undertaken in universities in the North East of England as part of the Science Enterprise Challenge initiative demonstrate the wide-ranging conceptualizations of ‘enterprise’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ held by academics from a broad spread of disciplines. These include conceptions of enterprise as certain skills, behaviours and attitudes, and as the establishment of a business venture. Subsequent ‘enterprise offerings’ within the university curriculum are informed and influenced by the subjective and different definitions of enterprise given by the research respondents. This paper suggests how these diverse definitions and conceptualizations may be accommodated by higher education institutions, and thus form part of the national policy agenda of creating an enterprising society.

This paper concerns a business development and support initiative – the Business Laboratory (BL) of the University of Kuopio, Finland. The project is designed to foster the emergence of university-based new ventures. The goal of the BL is to develop ‘incubator-ready’ science-based firms. The BL also supports management team development, encourages the production of cases and generates positive role models. Most entrepreneurship programmes focus on new firms, excluding the establishment of new businesses in large corporations. Particular emphasis is given to the planning and building of an infrastructure and the development of a favourable environment for new ventures. Many programmes offer assistance in matters relating to intellectual property, business planning, training, etc. They focus on the entrepreneurial process after the proposal stage, thus ignoring the stages at which inventions are generated or scientific results converted into embryonic business ideas and innovations. Consequently, the actual spin-off mechanism within a university can be neglected. The BL, by contrast, seeks to influence the critical phases and events in the emergence process, going back to an earlier stage than that at which people normally begin to observe and identify entrepreneurial action.

Whether or not a society can be called ‘entrepreneurial’ depends in part on the legitimacy and esteem accorded to those who pursue the entrepreneurial route. Communities in which entrepreneurship can thrive create more jobs and wealth. Entrepreneurship foments the Schumpeterian process of creative destruction by which the new replaces the old. New opportunities are perceived, capitalized and converted into marketable products or services. Fresh competition in the free market economy and the breaking down of international borders will significantly influence new company formation and the underlying models of entrepreneurial motion. Ample opportunities for creativity and innovation are driving the move towards the formation of small businesses that from the start enter into a fast and high-growth phase – the so-called ‘entrepreneurial growth’ companies. Is there a distinctive role for education in enhancing entrepreneurial capacity bringing together entrepreneurial capacity and opportunities, and thus expanding local entrepreneurial activity in the form of entrepreneurial growth companies? In addressing this question, the paper first looks at two basic models of entrepreneurial motion – the small business model and the growth model – and then investigates the concepts of entrepreneurial learning and organizations for entrepreneurial education (the entrepreneurial universities). Entrepreneurial universities foster interaction and networking. They embed entrepreneurship in academic culture in order to achieve economic returns from the knowledge generated through research projects, empowered teams of teachers, students and business people, face-to-face and electronic relationships, and networked enterprises emerging from their spin-off activity. Finally, the paper identifies agents in the market and seed funds as instrumental organizations in the role of entrepreneurial universities. Endowed with high education and marketable skills, those agents support the new company in creating its own market. Seed funds provide risk-bearing capital and management support, which are complementary ingredients to money and intangible assets from the founder, family and friends.

It is a paradox of entrepreneurship that entrepreneurs often have to develop new products and/or modify existing ones for their entry into the market and for their survival, but find it difficult to attract the necessary expertise or afford the costs of setting up formal R&D facilities. This paper examines the ingenious methods employed by entrepreneurs to accomplish this apparently impossible task. Based on a review of the literature and an examination of anecdotes and case studies on new product launches, it is inferred that the principal strategy of entrepreneurs for developing and commercializing new ideas is to identify and leverage network resources. The most commonly used of these resources are: (a) large corporations with a need to externalize some of their activities; (b) small companies with similar or complementary interests but which are unable or unwilling to bear the full risk and therefore are interested in sharing the risk and returns; (c) research institutions that periodically come up with potentially useful ideas but are not in a position to commercialize them; (d) funding agencies that are interested in high returns and therefore are prepared to take high risks; and (e) government and public agencies interested in the development of their domains for which they consider the innovative entrepreneur to be one of the most effective instruments. All these organizations are motivated by self-interest and thus can provide opportunities for meaningful and productive partnerships for the entrepreneur. In this context, new product development in entrepreneurial small firms should be seen more as a social than a technological process.

This paper is concerned with ‘ways of seeing’ entrepreneurship. The study of entrepreneurship is compared to a painter's study of his or her subject. The detail lies in the values and symbols, which inform the portrait or the landscape in which the entrepreneur evolves. The detail also informs the conceptualization and implementation of the programmes for a variety of audiences. The paper outlines some of the conceptual underpinnings for entrepreneurship programmes across the world, and how such programmes emerge in different contexts, especially within higher education institutions. The pursuit of entrepreneurship education poses certain challenges both for the higher education system and the student, and the author discusses these issues and how they have influenced the development of a postgraduate programme in entrepreneurship in his university.