Description
In this brief description define developing entrepreneurial literacy at university a hands on approach.
Developing Entrepreneurial Literacy at
University: A Hands-on Approach
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
University of Oviedo, Spain
ABSTRACT Entrepreneurship has become a cornerstone of economic development and
as such has been perceived as a solution to unemployment and economic crisis. In this
paper we present a case study of the entrepreneurial literacy approach followed at the
University of Oviedo. We present 6 andragogy programs implemented with the aim to
develop an entrepreneurial mind-set amongst students in the course of developing their
business projects. The paper presents the scope of literacy in the entrepreneurial field
by differentiating between the various potential strategies for teaching and learning
entrepreneurial skill, competencies and capabilities. Following the establishment of the
basic theoretical background the paper focuses on using the 6 different programs that
have been implemented at the University of Oviedo as an illustration of how students
can be supported to develop entrepreneurial literacy using a range of teaching resources
including cinema, case studies, conferences and real-life projects. The paper identifies
the literacy element of writing business plan as an important ingredient in the transfer
of the necessary skills required to make a success of setting up small and medium busi-
ness.
Key words: Illiteracy, Entrepreneurship, Education and teaching entrepreneurship
Introduction
Today, entrepreneurship has become a very fashionable and trendy topic due to small
firms being key drivers of economic growth. In some countries, with low entrepreneu-
rial intention propensity, entrepreneurship has been considered the solution to high
unemployment rates among young people and among middle-aged workers who have
been laid-off, due, in both cases, to the economic crisis. As a result, the local, regional,
national and supranational administrations alone or in partnerships with private compa-
nies and foundations are encouraging the creation and development of new entrepre-
International Journal of Multidisciplinary Comparative Studies
Volume 1 No. 2, 2014, pp. 57—75
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
58
neurial entities. More favorable regulation, subsidies, training and developing a positive
mind-set towards entrepreneurship are their main mechanisms to encourage the crea-
tion of new firms. To some extent, an entrepreneurship bubble has been initiated,
which pushes people to become entrepreneurs despite they may not be literate to cre-
ate a new entity nor to run a small business. As such, we could introduce the term en-
trepreneurial illiteracy as the lack of knowledge and skills related to the deployment or
management of a new venture. Illiteracy is not related to any sort of formal education
achieved, but rather to the lack of capabilities or skills and attitudes to perform satisfac-
torily a task. Very smart technical people may lack business capabilities and skills while
effective managerial people may lack capability and skills to detect and exploit an entre-
preneurial opportunity. Entrepreneurial literacy is just about providing the attitudes,
skills and knowledge to make a person capable to detect an opportunity and to make it
grow in a sustainable way. Sustainability is difficult to achieve due to failure rate of new
ventures. The studies on firm survival rates suggest a range of about 19 percent to 22
percent of firms exit the market in their first year of existence and about 50 percent of
the firms do not survive their fifth year (Cook et alt. 2012). Many factors affect the sur-
vival rate: macroeconomic factors such as general economic growth or availability of
capital but also specific variables such as the number of people employed by the new
firm, its sector of operations, the pressure to become self-employed or the motive that
led the founder to become an entrepreneur. We propose that the entrepreneurial (i)
lliteracy of the founders does affect the survival rate. In this paper, we present the ap-
proach followed at the University of Oviedo to reduce entrepreneurial illiteracy. The
paper is structured as follows. After this introduction, in section two and analysis of
entrepreneurship and the way education may affect it is presented. A distinction be-
tween educating and teaching entrepreneurship is made. Then, in section three, differ-
ent andragogy approaches towards training for entrepreneurship are presented. The
focus is university students who are not following a specific course of entrepreneurship,
but rather have shown their interest in the field. The paper concludes summarizing the
findings of the case studies.
Entrepreneurship: teaching and education it
A good starting point on any study centered on entrepreneurial literacy is to clarify the
term entrepreneurship, its scope and its domains. As it is pointed out by Solomon
(2007) “there is a dearth of definitions, characteristics, competencies and behaviors that
many believe describe the entrepreneur. Is it any wonder then, that the teaching of
entrepreneurship education is fragmented with no general agreement established on
whom or what are entrepreneurs or entrepreneurship?” Therefore, before discussing
training for entrepreneurship, it is important to find out what is meant by entrepre-
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
59
neurship and what are the main topics covered by this discipline. However, this is not
an easy task because due to the fact that “there are fundamentally different conceptions
and interpretations of the concept of entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial role, con-
sensus on a definition of the field in terms of the entrepreneur is perhaps an impossibil-
ity’’ (Venkataraman, 1997: 120). In this paper we follow three approaches towards
entrepreneurship that will guide the programs to overcome entrepreneurial illiteracy
and, hopefully, will guarantee a larger survival rate of new firms formed. A first per-
spective of entrepreneurship is to consider it “the scholarly examination of how, by
whom and with what effects opportunities to create future goods and services are discovered,
evaluated and exploited” (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000, p. 218). This perspective does
not necessarily refer to the setting of a new venture but sets the focus on opportunity
recognition.
Two important aspects in the early life of a new venture – despite the legal form it
takes- are how to identify and validate the opportunity (which is based on entrepreneu-
rial creativity and innovation) and how to plan, gather resources, and manage the right
team of people for successfully launching and sustaining the new business or activity
(entrepreneurial management). Therefore, entrepreneurs are characterized by being in
permanent search of opportunities to organize and to use appropriate resources, turn-
ing them into value from an economic and social perspective. Entrepreneurs are capa-
ble of foreseeing opportunities to reap the benefits of the market. As a result, entrepre-
neurs should possess a set of capabilities that differentiate them from other individuals,
amongst which stand: autonomy, not being risk adverse, being creative, possess long-
sighted market or technical vision, be leaders and be capable to manage social net-
works, people and other resources (Fayolle, 2006).
A second perspective of entrepreneurship arises from the Management academic
area; where entrepreneurship is a relatively new discipline -formally gaining its own
distinct divisional status within the United States Academy of Management in 1987-
(Hindle, 2007). The Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division’s domain
statement defines the domain of entrepreneurship as the creation and management of new
businesses, small businesses and family businesses, and the characteristics and special problems of
entrepreneurs. Its major topics include new venture ideas and strategies; ecological influ-
ences on venture creation and demise; the acquisition and management of venture capi-
tal and venture teams; self-employment; the owner-manager; management succession,
corporate venturing and the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic de-
velopment (Shane, 2010).
According to Shane’s revision of its 2000 seminal work in 2010, entrepreneurship
deals either with firm formation (which is the most popular perception and more easily
measured in terms of new participants in the market or their survival rate) or the iden-
tification, evaluation and exploitation of opportunities (which is a process not only per-
formed in new firms, but also in existing entities through intra-entrepreneurship or
social entrepreneurship and that may remain hidden in other concepts, such as innova-
tion and creativity) .
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
60
The third perspective, which is also supported by the European Commission in 2012,
points out that entrepreneurial education, embraces more than specific the process of
firm creation or the detection of business opportunities. It is also the set of activities
that foster in the learners, or young people, entrepreneurial mind-sets, attitudes and
skills to enable them to be more creative and self-confident in whatever they undertake
(European Commission, 2012). Therefore, entrepreneurial education aims to develop
more creative and innovative individuals, who seize opportunities in their environment
and who assume the risks to change things, achieving thus their personal fulfillment,
social inclusion, active citizenship and employability in a knowledge-based society.
This third perspective of entrepreneurship is clearly related to the entrepreneurial
spirit of the Society and to a proactive attitude of its individuals towards changes, to the
autonomous solution of problems, and to provide added value. Ideally, this spirit
should be combined with managerial capabilities leading thus to an appraisal of entre-
preneurial vocations (European Commission, 2003) and firm formation, which pro-
mote economic development. Precisely, the overlap between the characteristics of pro-
active individuals and entrepreneurs make it possible to analogically apply and imple-
ment some principles of business entrepreneurship to education, regardless the learners
might be willing to create a new venture or to expand an existing one. As such, the
2009 Eurobarometer shows that 45% of respondents in EU 27 would be willing to set
up a business, while 49% would rather be employees.
The purpose of any literacy program is to reduce the lack of knowledge, skills, atti-
tudes and capabilities to perform or undertake an activity. As it was pointed before, we
might consider that entrepreneurial illiteracy may reflect: the lack of capability to seize
opportunities, to implement them into a new venture that has to be managed or the
lack of a proactive attitude towards changes and autonomous solutions. Hence, when
implementing an entrepreneurial program we may differentiate between developing
entrepreneurial attitudes, skills and capabilities in any of the three previous domains.
Amongst the most relevant entrepreneurial attitudes are a sense of initiative, risk
propensity, self-efficacy, need for achievement and structural behavior. Entrepreneurial
skills are those required to detect an idea and to combine resources to a more effective or
efficient use (Davidsson, 2003) from an economic or social perspective. They are: crea-
tivity, analytic thinking, motivation, networking and adaptability (European Commis-
sion, 2012). Finally, entrepreneurial (managerial) capabilities are the knowledge, busi-
ness skills and the practical know-how and abilities to create, assess, manage and sustain
new ventures.
Despite the focus on psychological and motivational theories of entrepreneurs, there
is still a main question that remains unresolved and that affects any training program in
entrepreneurship: are entrepreneurs born or can an entrepreneur be developed? Ac-
cording to Hindle (2007), the vocational aspects of entrepreneurship can be taught and
are the same, or very similar, to the vocational aspects of management; though entre-
preneurship also has its own distinctive features. Such specific skills include opportunity
evaluation and entrepreneurial business planning. Therefore, it is possible to accept that
the skills of entrepreneurship can be taught even if the aptitude and motivation to be a
great entrepreneur cannot. This aptitude is related to psychological and motivational
characteristics.
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
61
A second aspect related to training in entrepreneurship is that it should be performed
from an adult education perspective (though there are training programs for children
aimed to create awareness). This is so, because the aim of the program is to help the
new founder to increase the survival rate of the firm once in the market. In the field of
entrepreneurship, an andragogy approach that exploits the accumulated experience of
adults should be more appealing to any would be entrepreneur. It is possible to differ-
entiate between teaching and educating entrepreneurship (Pérez-Bustamante, 2010).
The teaching aspect refers to educational contexts in which knowledge transfer of en-
trepreneurial themes and dimensions, business skills and the practical know-how and
abilities to create, manage, assess and sustain new ventures are set (Kuratko, 2005;
Solomon, 2007). Its objective and teaching method is to make the learner be able to, at
least, perceive opportunities, design the product, craft a business plan, find resources
and support, market and finance the innovations. This is done in a highly contextualized
environment defined by a specific entrepreneurial project. The learning approach fol-
lowed should provide the entrepreneur with knowledge to better manage the new pro-
ject and to overcome the difficulties faced during the preparation and startup phases.
Therefore, the entrepreneur’s learning process consists in finding the appropriate an-
swers to the diversity of problems encountered, to learn how to face problems, to find
appropriate solutions –not optimal ones–, and to develop the specific routines and
skills linked to the role of the company manager, who will have to adjust the organiza-
tion in the face of the numerous incidents, events and problems that will occur in the
first few years of the new venture’s life (Fayolle, 2006). Educational programs and sys-
tems should be geared toward creativity, multidisciplinary and process-oriented ap-
proaches, and theory-based practical applications. Since "off-the-shelf" solutions are
not available to solve such chaotic and fuzzy problems, different skills and knowledge
must be discovered. They include pattern recognition, mapping, front-end experimen-
tation, experiential projection and pre-structuring of chaos (Plaschka and Weisch,
1998). In some cases, writing down a business plan is the final outcome. However,
more recent trends under the name of lean entrepreneurship focus on putting the en-
trepreneur into the action as soon as possible.
On the contrary, entrepreneurial education has as an objective the development of
individuals’ entrepreneurial spirit, to make them more entrepreneurial, first in their
minds and then through their actions. It must create awareness and positive perceptions
of entrepreneurship but it must also transmit knowledge about the risks and the sacri-
fices that assume entrepreneurs (Pérez-Bustamante, 2010). Entrepreneurial education
enables to understand better the roles and actions of entrepreneurs, their values, atti-
tudes and motivations (Fayolle, 2006). Its focus must be the entrepreneur, the practi-
tioner and its importance in the economic development of the country, presenting en-
trepreneurship as an engine of economic growth in a market economy. Non-
entrepreneurs are helped to asses, value and appreciate the skills, intelligence and po-
litical, cultural and economic infrastructures that enable the creation of new enter-
prises. Its objective is to make it well-understood why entrepreneurship matters, how
it works and how it can be sustained (Kauffman Report, 2009). The final objective of
entrepreneurial education involves changing well embedded mind-sets and perceptions
of the economic and social roles of entrepreneurs. This learning process occurs when
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
62
the learner selects relevant material, organizes it into a coherent representation and
integrates it with his or her previous knowledge about technical or commercial aspects.
Ideally, the learner will put that knowledge into action, altering his or her behavior. It
is non-specific to a given entrepreneurial project and should present aggregate data of
the entrepreneurial field in order to make learners realize the full picture.
From an educational perspective, entrepreneurial concepts may be tacit and difficult
to explain and understand by learners, regardless of their managerial academic back-
ground. However, as a positive aspect, if they are going to set up their own business,
they may be really enthusiastic about entrepreneurship, new management methods and
the economic prospects of their idea. This enthusiasm allows the lecturer to motivate
learners with a practical perspective based on self-application of entrepreneurship. A
different situation arises with those learners who do not specifically aim to set up a
business and who may consider businessmen’s interests being against those of workers’.
Therefore, a first aspect is to provide these learners with a thorough understanding of
the role of businessmen in society.
As a conclusion, when addressing adult education in entrepreneurship three ap-
proaches should be considered:
Entrepreneurship is an essential capitalist mechanism for people to enter the economic
mainstream and their access to the pursuit of economic success (Kuratko, 2005); there-
fore, the social and economic perspectives of entrepreneurs should focus on the im-
pacts and results of entrepreneurship (seek for profit, altruism, self-realization motiva-
tion, self-employment, increasing personal or shareholder wealth or achieving social
welfare).
Second, do entrepreneurs possess distinctive psychological and sociological personal
traits that make them be different to any individual? And if so it is, should people be
pushed or precluded from being entrepreneurs?.
Third, the managerial entrepreneurial process, that should address aspects such as
sources of opportunities, the process of discovery, the evaluation and exploitation of
ideas and the factors that foster innovation, allow for a better management of start-ups
and access to venture capital.
Finally, there is no doubt that entrepreneurship is performed by persons, but or-
ganizations must also be entrepreneurial if they are to survive in times of increased
globalization and tremendous market and technological change. Corporate entrepre-
neurship in both for profit and not for profit organizations involves the study of entre-
preneurial processes and principles as applied in established organizations.
Andragogy in entrepreneurship: a hands-on approach
In 1985, Vesper (1985) described that the initial entrepreneurship courses, labeled
variously “Entrepreneurship” or “New Venture Creation,” had “standard” contents such
as “(I) venture design projects, (2) case studies, (3) readings and (4) lectures by guest
speakers and the instructor”. It was a hands-on experiential method of presenting the
topic and his research was more pedagogical than content based.
Actual university entrepreneurship programs should begin by recognizing the im-
portance of constant relationship with the real arena of business: the outside world. A
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
63
second aspect relates to the need to implement an andragogy methodology to accom-
plish entrepreneurial education. Theory, case studies, guest speakers, business plans,
consulting activities or internships in entrepreneurial ventures are the main ways used
to teach and let adult learners experience entrepreneurship. In fact, these methodolo-
gies have been traditionally implemented in the in the management field. However, in
entrepreneurship, it is essential to share with students the expertise, experiences and
perspectives of businessmen or entrepreneurs, which can thus be used as examples.
In this section, we share the different approaches, in addition to business plan devel-
opment, that have been put into practice to teach and lecture entrepreneurship at the
University of Oviedo with both the aim of teaching and educating in entrepreneurship.
Since 2008, the author has been in charge of the entrepreneurial practices performed at
the University of Oviedo for its students and graduates. This has led to the design and
implementation of training programs for adults and to the provision of training and
educative programs about entrepreneurship. Different activities have been performed
with the aim of fostering entrepreneurial mind-sets and helping would-be entrepre-
neurs to analyze, focus and improve their business ideas. The following paragraphs
summarize some of these practices. The activities shown do not provide a set of best
practices, but are a sample of different activities that can be performed to educate and
teach adults in the entrepreneurial literacy taking onto consideration that having an idea
does not necessarily mean being literate in how to implement it. Specific activities re-
lated to spin offs are out of the scope of this paper. This section is mainly descriptive;
though a summary of the approaches and their focus on attitudes, skills and capabilities
is presented at the end of the paper in table 2.
The business idea contest: elevator pitch
Already in its sixth edition, the university entrepreneurial idea contest is a mix of eleva-
tor pitch contest and a course on basis small business management. It is targeted to stu-
dents and graduates who have a business idea related to their studies. Since the Univer-
sity of Oviedo is a generalist university, there are students from science, humanities,
social sciences, engineering and medical studies. Therefore, the range of participants is
really wide and their level of knowledge of the entrepreneur and firm formation proc-
ess is diverse and very limited. As a positive aspect, participating in the program con-
nects students with other colleagues from other fields of expertise and broadens the
perspective of the academic studies. In the contest are valued: how the idea is presented
-and thus reinforces the importance of the communication approach in elevator pitches-
; and how well developed the idea is and its sustainability—hence, it reinforces more
traditional andragogy courses based on building the business plan for the idea-.
Participants are working on their real ideas. As such, and as it occurs in any entre-
preneurial setting there are divergent expectations amongst would-be entrepreneurs
(who may be over-optimistic about their ideas) and the potential investors and would
be exploiters (who may be realistic). It is thus reinforced the need of quick communica-
tion skills and basic business management tools to fully argument the advantages of the
idea proposed. The average number of teams participating in the contest is 12 and the
contest is performed during the academic course: February till early May as an addi-
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
64
tional course in the curriculum. As part of the contest, participants may attend a volun-
tary 20 hour long basic entrepreneurship and management course, which deals with the
following topics: creativity, business model, idea validation and analysis and critical
thinking; business canvas; business strengths, weaknesses opportunities and threats
analysis (SWOT analysis); financial management and marketing and communication
skills. This course is voluntary and free; though it may be undervalued due to the fact
that participants are passionate about of their ideas and over optimistic about their busi-
ness potential. Nevertheless, maintaining the voluntary aspect of the assistance to the
course is considered essential, since entrepreneurs must choose where to get their own
resources and are adults with the need of a free way of getting these resources.
Each team of would-be entrepreneurs is assigned business mentors who are entrepre-
neurs from the Local Young Entrepreneurial Association. Their role is to meet and
guide the would-be entrepreneurs to solve specific problems arising in their business
ideas and to give them pieces of advice arising from their expertise as well as introduce
them into the importance of networking. As part of the contest, participants must de-
velop an outline (8 pages maximum) of their business plan to give it to the jury. The
participants are recorded in the University TV studio for two minutes to promote their
idea or personal aspects. In the final gala, the video is shown and then the two minute
time controlled elevator pitch takes place with the participants answering the questions
posed by the jury. The participants may earn three different prices of 3.000; 2.000 and
1.000 euros, which do not necessarily have to be invested in a new business setting.
Participants explain that the contest is a great opportunity for them to analyze the
feasibility of their ideas (either individually or collectively); to think about the impor-
tance of some overlooked aspects related to setting up and managing a business which
they had not previously thought about; to improve their communication skills and to
get into contact with local entrepreneurs.
The Estincoacher project. Students becoming consultants and coachers for
ITC aided internationalization process at local micro-firms.
This project was financed in a competitive bid in 2011 by the Spanish Industry and
Trade Ministry, which is also competent in the deployment of the entrepreneurial pol-
icy. The purpose of the project was to provide the students with a first-hand experience
of entrepreneurship by being consultants for microbusiness in the region. 48 partici-
pants initiated the program. The project was structured in two different aspects. Par-
ticipants had to follow a pedagogical practically oriented management course dealing
with topics such as entrepreneurship, international trade management and ITC website
analysis. Then, in order to become the micro consultants, the participants had to pre-
sent a practical essay related to the topics covered in the course. As part of this second
task they should contact local businesses in order to promote among them the excel-
lences of national and international trade through the web. 11 students got a contract to
work for a month performing the consulting activity. Working by pairs they had to
contact the entrepreneurs who had initially expressed their interest to participate in the
program, visit them, analyze their business strategic value and provide a detailed analy-
sis of the possibilities to internationalize it, while giving them support in ITC and inter-
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
65
national trade. The students had a close contact with the local community, developed
communication skills and understood the reality and problems faced by the small and
micro-firms in the region. The students had to produce a basic summary that was given
to the companies.
Participants were happy with the project because they considered that it allowed
them to have a first-hand opportunity to meet local managers and to talk to them about
their businesses, their motivations and their interests. They were really concerned at
the fact that, despite lacking academic business backgrounds, local businessmen had a
clear and real perspective of their businesses. Students were really conscious of the
value of time in business and had to work in different sectors, while having to self-
organize themselves. Unfortunately, the project did not have a second edition due to
the lack of financing and to difficult bureaucratic conditions for the work to be per-
formed in companies.
Entrepreneur speaking series and company visits.
These activities aim to raise awareness of the important socio-economic role of entre-
preneurs. It is designed for students enrolled in the different courses of Business Ad-
ministration at the different schools and are also offered for students in the Entrepre-
neurship courses. The perspective is to provide students with the chance to talk to
young entrepreneurs who, in addition of presenting their companies, explain the ad-
vantages and disadvantages of setting a business based on their academic degree. Usu-
ally, the entrepreneurs have studied the same degree as the students they will be meet-
ing. The main advantage is that the talk provides a different way to contact with entre-
preneurs and that it breaks down with stereotypes about entrepreneurs. After the talks
a questionnaire is passed to the students. It is worth noting that the lowest mark is the
valuation of the entrepreneurs themselves, which is either linked to a culture mistrust
of entrepreneurs in such a unionized region as Asturias, is; or it may also be linked to
the fact that there is some distance between the speaker and the attendants to the talks.
A slightly different version of this first contact with entrepreneurs is the mandatory
interview for students in the Entrepreneurship courses. The focus is to contact a local
entrepreneur and write down an essay on the insights about the entrepreneur him/
herself and the business they are running. Usually, entrepreneurs explain the students
their difficulties. A different project is the company visit guided by different school
teachers. The results of the different programs are presented below. Students seem to
prefer more the company visits than the entrepreneur speaking series. Meeting with
entrepreneurs seems to be more relevant if the students have to pass them an inter-
view.
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
66
Figure 1. Entrepreneur speaking series
Figure 2. Company visits
The cinema forum on entrepreneurship
For young people, the transmission of tacit knowledge can be enhanced through audio-
visual technologies. These affect positively the development of new learning styles be-
cause visual images enhance comprehension. The fact that films are familiar attention-
capturing visual media that engage learners in a plot and encourage retention of the
knowledge acquired (Scherer and Baker, 1999) was used to provide entrepreneurial
education at the University of Oviedo. During the summers of 2010 and 2011 four
seminar courses were offered at the University of Oviedo, with a total assistance of 73
students from diverse Schools. The seminars were structured in four hour sessions initi-
ated by a lecture, followed by the visioning of a film and a debate. Each day, a different
theme was taken into consideration. The focus of the seminar was to create awareness
on business entrepreneurs, though its perspective was also educational and not teaching
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
67
entrepreneurship through a business plan.
Films were chosen as the andragogy mechanism because they facilitate observational
learning by means of exploiting visual imagery (Bumpus, 2005). However, this is not
enough to achieve an effective acquisition of knowledge; so prior to visioning the film a
small talk was given for students on the topic analyzed in the film. The conference is
essential because it differentiates between the surface and the depth structure of the
narratives. The surface structure refers to descriptions and illustrations of what, where
and when things occur. As films exaggerate, sensationalize and glamorize characters
and events, they may be conceived as superficial, not depth and not substance for the-
ory building, but they are enjoyable. However, the power of film narratives for training
relies in the fact that they constitute, construct, reflect and recreate versions of social
and organizational worlds. The teachers focused on the fact that the validity of films is
not based on their capability to build theory through statistic generalization, but on
their capability to develop naturalistic generalization (personal identification and famili-
arity of the viewer with the characters and plot; informing thus organizational and man-
agement practice) or analytic generalization (how the thesis advanced can inform the-
ory) (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004; Champoux, 1999).
An evaluation was passed to the students on both the pedagogical method and the
knowledge and perception of entrepreneurship.
Regarding the methodology, watching a film is considered to be more interesting
than reading a book and, therefore, it is preferred by the learners. This perspective is
increased after viewing the film. Therefore, the motivating effect of films is confirmed.
Learners were also convinced that a film could help them to understand better theoreti-
cal concepts, since they recognize that viewing films is a good practice to explain some
theoretical concepts. Students did not consider very important to have a basic handout
of the film prior to viewing it. After viewing it, they valued it very positively increasing
its importance.
Table 1: Assessment of the methodology
Figures 3 and 4 show the answers given to the questions before the seminar (in blue)
and after the seminar (in red). Figure 3 shows the positive incidence of the seminar on
the perception of entrepreneurs, helping to destroy well embedded perspectives of
entrepreneurs and facilitating a better knowledge of their personal and social
characteristics and motivations. The tendencies in the answers are positive, except for
the reasons to start up a new venture that have been considered only of an economic
nature. Entrepreneurs are perceived to be people who sacrifice their life in pursuit of a
vocation, who have special personality traits and need a strong support from their
METHODOLOGY
BEFO-
RE
AF-
TER
EFFECT
I rather see a film tan read a book chapter to have concepts explained 7,6 8,95 + 1,35
A film can help me understand well academic concepts 7,6 9,26 + 1,66
It is necessary to have a previous résumé of the film and of the ques-
tions for debate
7,15 8,79
+ 1,64
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
68
family and social networks. Entrepreneurs are therefore special, anyone can be an
entrepreneur despite their age and students do not perceive entrepreneur women to
have more difficulties than entrepreneur men to pursue their goals –perception that is
enhanced after the seminar.
Figure 3: Perceptions of the entrepreneurs
Figure 4 shows (on the next page) the results for the entrepreneurial process from idea
to new venture development. It is important to highlight the relevance of novelty given
to the new venture and the importance granted to design and craft a good business
plan, which has been considered as a managerial tool rather than an instrument to get
financial resources. However, it is awkward that the students consider the importance
of chance in the development of new ideas, in detriment of research and expertise. This
leads to build an excuse not to become an entrepreneur for not being creative or lucky.
Data also supports that after the seminar, students value more the strategic dimension
of the business management and market access than financial resources. This implies
that students acknowledge the importance of making a responsible idea viability analy-
sis. The positive effects of the seminar are that there is a better understanding of the
economic and social role of entrepreneurs and that it is essential to carefully plan the
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
69
process in order to increase the likelihood of being successful. Nevertheless, it is im-
portant to highlight that after the seminars, the entrepreneurial mind-set was changed
and students now felt there may be entrepreneurs within large companies as well,
building therefore on the concept of intra-entrepreneurship and putting distance be-
tween entrepreneurship and venture creation.
Figure 4: Perceptions of the entrepreneurial process
The social entrepreneurship project
As part of the Entrepreneurship course, and being graded, final year students in the
accounting and finance degree at the Business School had to develop a social entrepre-
neurial project. The students working in groups had to choose a Non-governmental
organization (NGO) and define a strategy to get money for this project. The project
gave birth to the First Social Project day at the School of Business. The students chose 4
different social NGO for sick children, prevention and rehabilitation of women prosti-
tutes, support for accident injuries and collection of bottle taps for sick children. They
decided to sell products, perform two lotteries with products given by local shops and
the main region’s soccer teams and to collect taps in the Business school. This hands-on
project was performed at the same time as the development of a business plan for new
ventures in a nearby local community, following a more traditional approach to lectur-
ing through business plans. In the specific case of the social project, no written reports
had to be delivered, but the students had to set their objectives and had to fulfil them.
In order to give the maximum resonance to the projects, they performed a show to
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
70
make the formal presentation of their NGO and had a magician performing an act.
Despite the amount of work it meant for the students, and the short time they had
to produce the projects and get the necessary resources (less than two months); the
students valued this as the most positive activity they had done in the course because
they had total freedom to define their project and they felt really passionate about it
(contrary to the development of the business plan, which was considered by them as an
academic duty). With the social project, they got the passion needed to get resources,
solve by themselves the problems encountered and value positively the social aspect of
their actions. Additionally, the fact that there were four groups competing created as
short of market competition to achieve the desired goals. However, the fact that the
groups had to produce a single social project day implied that they also had to collabo-
rate to get additional resources and support for the presentation of the projects.
The Creativity Seminars
In these seminars, that are offered as an intensive week-long 30 hour transversal
courses for any student at the University of Oviedo, different artists are invited to give
a theoretical and practical speech on the role of creativity as a competitive advantage in
their businesses.
The purpose of the course is to make the students understand that not all innova-
tions arise from a technical field and that they could make their living just leaving their
creativity flow. The young artists explain the students how they run their businesses
and which are the main difficulties that they have found. At the same time, creativity is
developed and enhanced among the students, making them understand that creativity is
necessary to give a solution to any personal or business problem.
The invited artists range from technology and scientific researchers in the automo-
tive and chemistry fields to cloth designers, painters, cooks, singers and musicians, pho-
tographers, owners of an advertising company, decorators, writers and so on. The stu-
dents have to build in groups and under the surveillance of one of the speakers an artis-
tic project from scrap. This, seems the most difficult task for them to do, because they
feel they are not suited to be creative, nor they allow themselves to be so. As a result,
they have to make group decisions and find the necessary resources to produce a hand
craft painting. The students have to produce an essay on how their creativity has been
enhanced by the course. They are also asked to report which are the most influential
aspects they have got from each speaker in the seminar.
Usually, the students discover that they are more creative than they thought, that
team-working facilitates and enhances the development of tasks and that intangible as-
sets can also be the source of a sustainable competitive advantage. As it was stated by
one Chemistry student: I never thought that to become a chemist you had to be creative. I
thought creativity was the domain of humanities and social sciences.
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
71
Table 2: Syntheses of the andragogy approaches towards entrepreneurship literacy
Final considerations
In this paper, a revision of 6 andragogy approaches to teach and educate adult people in
the field of entrepreneurship has been presented. Without neglecting the importance of
building a business plan and of individual counselling, would-be entrepreneurs need
tools for autonomous work. In fact, entrepreneurs should be passionate for their ideas
and should be capable to overcome any limitations they may face while setting up their
businesses. In the specific case of the University of Oviedo the philosophy backing our
entrepreneurial programs is to enhance critical thinking, autonomous solution to prob-
lems and, definitively, to make students and would be entrepreneurs the owners of
Activity Attitudes Skills Compe-
tencies
Objective Evaluation
Elevator
pitch and
business
model
Initiative,
self effec-
tiveness
Creativity,
analitic
thinking,
networking
Small
business
skills
Teaching
Develop an
idea and
know better
a small
business
It is an opportunity to
analyze the feasibility of
the idea; think manage-
rially; communication
skills; learn from entre-
preneurs
Students as
coachers for
ITC and
internation-
alization at
local micro-
firms
Self effi-
cacy,
structural
behavior,
achieve-
ment
Analytic
thinking,
networking,
adaptability
Small
business
diagnosis
& re-
porting
Teaching &
Educating
Develop an
idea and
know better
a small
business
Direct contact with local
managers; conscious-
ness of the value of time
in business; self-
organization
Entrepre-
neur speak-
ing series,
interviews
and com-
pany visits
In the
interviews
initiative
and risk
assump-
tion
Networking Practical
know
how
Educating
Awareness
of entrepre-
neurs
Accessing to new infor-
mation and new per-
spectives
Cinema
forum on
Entrepre-
neurship
Practical
know
how;
report-
ing
Educating
Awareness
of entrepre-
neurs
Access to new informa-
tion and new perspec-
tives
Social entre-
preneurship
Initiative,
risk pro-
pensity;
structural
behavior
Creativity;
analytic
thinking;
networking
Team
working
Educating &
Teaching
Develop an
idea; aware-
ness of
entrepre-
neurs
total freedom to define
their project and they
felt really passionate
about it to get to get
resources, solve prob-
lems; market competi-
tion and collaboration
The Creativ-
ity Seminars
Creativity;
analytic
thinking;
networking
Educating
Know better
a small
business;
awareness
of entrepre-
neurs
Are more creative than
thought, team work
enhances the develop-
ment of tasks; intangible
assets are source of
sustainability; creativity
is not only the domain of
humanities and social
sciences
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
72
their decision making. After all, innovation, risk assumptions and failure and learning
by doing are key aspects entrepreneurs should possess. Additionally creating awareness
of the positive effects of entrepreneurship at a societal and economic level are also con-
sidered.
Towards developing a set of attitudes, skills and competencies relevant for entrepre-
neurship and entrepreneurial mind-set, the six mentioned programs have been devel-
oped. They have been presented as an example of different approaches to make attrac-
tive the field of entrepreneurship. Table 2 summarizes the main aspects analyzed in the
case studies. As in any andragogy or pedagogical training program, the objective sought
conditions the methodology implemented. In our specific case in some programs an
educational approach was followed, whereas in others the learning one was predomi-
nant. The programs presented are the result of an evolution on the development of a
new focus towards entrepreneurship in our institution. In any case, due to the limited
size of Asturias (one million inhabitants) and to the previous existence of business incu-
bators performing training and counselling, our scope was not to substitute them, but
to collaborate with them in the achievement of more entrepreneurial students. The
traditional focus of academic studies in technical specialization leaves scope for a trans-
versal course on entrepreneurship that both provides insights about the management of
a firm or capability to detect opportunities; thus reducing entrepreneurial illiteracy.
However, if there is no a specific project in mind setting that program through a busi-
ness plan course is really a difficult task, which may be neglected by the students. The 6
approaches presented may serve as an example on how to implement creative programs
in the field of entrepreneurship despite the risk of failures or not being fully under-
stood.
Correspondence
Guillermo Pérez-Bustamante, Ph. D.
Associate Professor in Business Organization
Manager of employability of the University of Oviedo since 2008
UNIVERSITY OF OVIEDO
FACULTAD DE ECONOMÍA Y EMPRESA.
Avda del Cristo S/n
33007 Oviedo- Spain
Email: [email protected]
Tel.: +34985104974
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
73
NOTES
1. In the mid-twentieth century scholars from psychology and sociology researched the
field with an interest in the entrepreneur as an individual and started to study the key
traits and the personality of the entrepreneur. This focus occupied a prominent position
in entrepreneurship research during the 1960s and 1970s. The best known study in this
respect is David McClelland’s work The Achieving Society (1961), in which he argued
that norms and values in a society, particularly with respect to the ‘need for achieve-
ment’, are of vital importance for economic development (Landström et al. 2012,
1155). In the 80`s the foundation of academic entrepreneurship research was set. While
early studies on entrepreneurship were centered on the question of how the personality
or background of the entrepreneur determines entrepreneurial behavior, recognizing
and exploiting opportunity became the essence of entrepreneurial behavior as well as the
defining processes of entrepreneurship (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000).
2. The specific domain of entrepreneurship could be defined as: How entrepreneurs iden-
tify opportunities, formulate business ideas, and evaluate them.
3. How the business ideas formulated by entrepreneurs affect their decisions to exploit
opportunities, as well as what influence the difficulty and risk inherent in the pursuit of
opportunities have on the exploitation decision.
4. How the context influences the identification and exploitation of opportunities
5. The process by which people exploit opportunities within existing organizations
6. The process of identifying and exploiting high-potential opportunities and internationali-
zation.
7. How is this process temporally ordered, its rationality and planning; or even if there
should be any optimal process at all.
8. In 1970 Malcolm Knowles published The modern practice of adult education and focused on
andragogy rather than pedagogy as teaching method. It is not the scope of this paper to
discuss Knowles’ propositions, but we support its application to entrepreneurial educa-
tion due to its scope.
9. (for an extended version please consult Pérez-Bustamante et alt. 2012).
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
74
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In this brief description define developing entrepreneurial literacy at university a hands on approach.
Developing Entrepreneurial Literacy at
University: A Hands-on Approach
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
University of Oviedo, Spain
ABSTRACT Entrepreneurship has become a cornerstone of economic development and
as such has been perceived as a solution to unemployment and economic crisis. In this
paper we present a case study of the entrepreneurial literacy approach followed at the
University of Oviedo. We present 6 andragogy programs implemented with the aim to
develop an entrepreneurial mind-set amongst students in the course of developing their
business projects. The paper presents the scope of literacy in the entrepreneurial field
by differentiating between the various potential strategies for teaching and learning
entrepreneurial skill, competencies and capabilities. Following the establishment of the
basic theoretical background the paper focuses on using the 6 different programs that
have been implemented at the University of Oviedo as an illustration of how students
can be supported to develop entrepreneurial literacy using a range of teaching resources
including cinema, case studies, conferences and real-life projects. The paper identifies
the literacy element of writing business plan as an important ingredient in the transfer
of the necessary skills required to make a success of setting up small and medium busi-
ness.
Key words: Illiteracy, Entrepreneurship, Education and teaching entrepreneurship
Introduction
Today, entrepreneurship has become a very fashionable and trendy topic due to small
firms being key drivers of economic growth. In some countries, with low entrepreneu-
rial intention propensity, entrepreneurship has been considered the solution to high
unemployment rates among young people and among middle-aged workers who have
been laid-off, due, in both cases, to the economic crisis. As a result, the local, regional,
national and supranational administrations alone or in partnerships with private compa-
nies and foundations are encouraging the creation and development of new entrepre-
International Journal of Multidisciplinary Comparative Studies
Volume 1 No. 2, 2014, pp. 57—75
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
58
neurial entities. More favorable regulation, subsidies, training and developing a positive
mind-set towards entrepreneurship are their main mechanisms to encourage the crea-
tion of new firms. To some extent, an entrepreneurship bubble has been initiated,
which pushes people to become entrepreneurs despite they may not be literate to cre-
ate a new entity nor to run a small business. As such, we could introduce the term en-
trepreneurial illiteracy as the lack of knowledge and skills related to the deployment or
management of a new venture. Illiteracy is not related to any sort of formal education
achieved, but rather to the lack of capabilities or skills and attitudes to perform satisfac-
torily a task. Very smart technical people may lack business capabilities and skills while
effective managerial people may lack capability and skills to detect and exploit an entre-
preneurial opportunity. Entrepreneurial literacy is just about providing the attitudes,
skills and knowledge to make a person capable to detect an opportunity and to make it
grow in a sustainable way. Sustainability is difficult to achieve due to failure rate of new
ventures. The studies on firm survival rates suggest a range of about 19 percent to 22
percent of firms exit the market in their first year of existence and about 50 percent of
the firms do not survive their fifth year (Cook et alt. 2012). Many factors affect the sur-
vival rate: macroeconomic factors such as general economic growth or availability of
capital but also specific variables such as the number of people employed by the new
firm, its sector of operations, the pressure to become self-employed or the motive that
led the founder to become an entrepreneur. We propose that the entrepreneurial (i)
lliteracy of the founders does affect the survival rate. In this paper, we present the ap-
proach followed at the University of Oviedo to reduce entrepreneurial illiteracy. The
paper is structured as follows. After this introduction, in section two and analysis of
entrepreneurship and the way education may affect it is presented. A distinction be-
tween educating and teaching entrepreneurship is made. Then, in section three, differ-
ent andragogy approaches towards training for entrepreneurship are presented. The
focus is university students who are not following a specific course of entrepreneurship,
but rather have shown their interest in the field. The paper concludes summarizing the
findings of the case studies.
Entrepreneurship: teaching and education it
A good starting point on any study centered on entrepreneurial literacy is to clarify the
term entrepreneurship, its scope and its domains. As it is pointed out by Solomon
(2007) “there is a dearth of definitions, characteristics, competencies and behaviors that
many believe describe the entrepreneur. Is it any wonder then, that the teaching of
entrepreneurship education is fragmented with no general agreement established on
whom or what are entrepreneurs or entrepreneurship?” Therefore, before discussing
training for entrepreneurship, it is important to find out what is meant by entrepre-
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
59
neurship and what are the main topics covered by this discipline. However, this is not
an easy task because due to the fact that “there are fundamentally different conceptions
and interpretations of the concept of entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial role, con-
sensus on a definition of the field in terms of the entrepreneur is perhaps an impossibil-
ity’’ (Venkataraman, 1997: 120). In this paper we follow three approaches towards
entrepreneurship that will guide the programs to overcome entrepreneurial illiteracy
and, hopefully, will guarantee a larger survival rate of new firms formed. A first per-
spective of entrepreneurship is to consider it “the scholarly examination of how, by
whom and with what effects opportunities to create future goods and services are discovered,
evaluated and exploited” (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000, p. 218). This perspective does
not necessarily refer to the setting of a new venture but sets the focus on opportunity
recognition.
Two important aspects in the early life of a new venture – despite the legal form it
takes- are how to identify and validate the opportunity (which is based on entrepreneu-
rial creativity and innovation) and how to plan, gather resources, and manage the right
team of people for successfully launching and sustaining the new business or activity
(entrepreneurial management). Therefore, entrepreneurs are characterized by being in
permanent search of opportunities to organize and to use appropriate resources, turn-
ing them into value from an economic and social perspective. Entrepreneurs are capa-
ble of foreseeing opportunities to reap the benefits of the market. As a result, entrepre-
neurs should possess a set of capabilities that differentiate them from other individuals,
amongst which stand: autonomy, not being risk adverse, being creative, possess long-
sighted market or technical vision, be leaders and be capable to manage social net-
works, people and other resources (Fayolle, 2006).
A second perspective of entrepreneurship arises from the Management academic
area; where entrepreneurship is a relatively new discipline -formally gaining its own
distinct divisional status within the United States Academy of Management in 1987-
(Hindle, 2007). The Academy of Management Entrepreneurship Division’s domain
statement defines the domain of entrepreneurship as the creation and management of new
businesses, small businesses and family businesses, and the characteristics and special problems of
entrepreneurs. Its major topics include new venture ideas and strategies; ecological influ-
ences on venture creation and demise; the acquisition and management of venture capi-
tal and venture teams; self-employment; the owner-manager; management succession,
corporate venturing and the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic de-
velopment (Shane, 2010).
According to Shane’s revision of its 2000 seminal work in 2010, entrepreneurship
deals either with firm formation (which is the most popular perception and more easily
measured in terms of new participants in the market or their survival rate) or the iden-
tification, evaluation and exploitation of opportunities (which is a process not only per-
formed in new firms, but also in existing entities through intra-entrepreneurship or
social entrepreneurship and that may remain hidden in other concepts, such as innova-
tion and creativity) .
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
60
The third perspective, which is also supported by the European Commission in 2012,
points out that entrepreneurial education, embraces more than specific the process of
firm creation or the detection of business opportunities. It is also the set of activities
that foster in the learners, or young people, entrepreneurial mind-sets, attitudes and
skills to enable them to be more creative and self-confident in whatever they undertake
(European Commission, 2012). Therefore, entrepreneurial education aims to develop
more creative and innovative individuals, who seize opportunities in their environment
and who assume the risks to change things, achieving thus their personal fulfillment,
social inclusion, active citizenship and employability in a knowledge-based society.
This third perspective of entrepreneurship is clearly related to the entrepreneurial
spirit of the Society and to a proactive attitude of its individuals towards changes, to the
autonomous solution of problems, and to provide added value. Ideally, this spirit
should be combined with managerial capabilities leading thus to an appraisal of entre-
preneurial vocations (European Commission, 2003) and firm formation, which pro-
mote economic development. Precisely, the overlap between the characteristics of pro-
active individuals and entrepreneurs make it possible to analogically apply and imple-
ment some principles of business entrepreneurship to education, regardless the learners
might be willing to create a new venture or to expand an existing one. As such, the
2009 Eurobarometer shows that 45% of respondents in EU 27 would be willing to set
up a business, while 49% would rather be employees.
The purpose of any literacy program is to reduce the lack of knowledge, skills, atti-
tudes and capabilities to perform or undertake an activity. As it was pointed before, we
might consider that entrepreneurial illiteracy may reflect: the lack of capability to seize
opportunities, to implement them into a new venture that has to be managed or the
lack of a proactive attitude towards changes and autonomous solutions. Hence, when
implementing an entrepreneurial program we may differentiate between developing
entrepreneurial attitudes, skills and capabilities in any of the three previous domains.
Amongst the most relevant entrepreneurial attitudes are a sense of initiative, risk
propensity, self-efficacy, need for achievement and structural behavior. Entrepreneurial
skills are those required to detect an idea and to combine resources to a more effective or
efficient use (Davidsson, 2003) from an economic or social perspective. They are: crea-
tivity, analytic thinking, motivation, networking and adaptability (European Commis-
sion, 2012). Finally, entrepreneurial (managerial) capabilities are the knowledge, busi-
ness skills and the practical know-how and abilities to create, assess, manage and sustain
new ventures.
Despite the focus on psychological and motivational theories of entrepreneurs, there
is still a main question that remains unresolved and that affects any training program in
entrepreneurship: are entrepreneurs born or can an entrepreneur be developed? Ac-
cording to Hindle (2007), the vocational aspects of entrepreneurship can be taught and
are the same, or very similar, to the vocational aspects of management; though entre-
preneurship also has its own distinctive features. Such specific skills include opportunity
evaluation and entrepreneurial business planning. Therefore, it is possible to accept that
the skills of entrepreneurship can be taught even if the aptitude and motivation to be a
great entrepreneur cannot. This aptitude is related to psychological and motivational
characteristics.
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
61
A second aspect related to training in entrepreneurship is that it should be performed
from an adult education perspective (though there are training programs for children
aimed to create awareness). This is so, because the aim of the program is to help the
new founder to increase the survival rate of the firm once in the market. In the field of
entrepreneurship, an andragogy approach that exploits the accumulated experience of
adults should be more appealing to any would be entrepreneur. It is possible to differ-
entiate between teaching and educating entrepreneurship (Pérez-Bustamante, 2010).
The teaching aspect refers to educational contexts in which knowledge transfer of en-
trepreneurial themes and dimensions, business skills and the practical know-how and
abilities to create, manage, assess and sustain new ventures are set (Kuratko, 2005;
Solomon, 2007). Its objective and teaching method is to make the learner be able to, at
least, perceive opportunities, design the product, craft a business plan, find resources
and support, market and finance the innovations. This is done in a highly contextualized
environment defined by a specific entrepreneurial project. The learning approach fol-
lowed should provide the entrepreneur with knowledge to better manage the new pro-
ject and to overcome the difficulties faced during the preparation and startup phases.
Therefore, the entrepreneur’s learning process consists in finding the appropriate an-
swers to the diversity of problems encountered, to learn how to face problems, to find
appropriate solutions –not optimal ones–, and to develop the specific routines and
skills linked to the role of the company manager, who will have to adjust the organiza-
tion in the face of the numerous incidents, events and problems that will occur in the
first few years of the new venture’s life (Fayolle, 2006). Educational programs and sys-
tems should be geared toward creativity, multidisciplinary and process-oriented ap-
proaches, and theory-based practical applications. Since "off-the-shelf" solutions are
not available to solve such chaotic and fuzzy problems, different skills and knowledge
must be discovered. They include pattern recognition, mapping, front-end experimen-
tation, experiential projection and pre-structuring of chaos (Plaschka and Weisch,
1998). In some cases, writing down a business plan is the final outcome. However,
more recent trends under the name of lean entrepreneurship focus on putting the en-
trepreneur into the action as soon as possible.
On the contrary, entrepreneurial education has as an objective the development of
individuals’ entrepreneurial spirit, to make them more entrepreneurial, first in their
minds and then through their actions. It must create awareness and positive perceptions
of entrepreneurship but it must also transmit knowledge about the risks and the sacri-
fices that assume entrepreneurs (Pérez-Bustamante, 2010). Entrepreneurial education
enables to understand better the roles and actions of entrepreneurs, their values, atti-
tudes and motivations (Fayolle, 2006). Its focus must be the entrepreneur, the practi-
tioner and its importance in the economic development of the country, presenting en-
trepreneurship as an engine of economic growth in a market economy. Non-
entrepreneurs are helped to asses, value and appreciate the skills, intelligence and po-
litical, cultural and economic infrastructures that enable the creation of new enter-
prises. Its objective is to make it well-understood why entrepreneurship matters, how
it works and how it can be sustained (Kauffman Report, 2009). The final objective of
entrepreneurial education involves changing well embedded mind-sets and perceptions
of the economic and social roles of entrepreneurs. This learning process occurs when
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
62
the learner selects relevant material, organizes it into a coherent representation and
integrates it with his or her previous knowledge about technical or commercial aspects.
Ideally, the learner will put that knowledge into action, altering his or her behavior. It
is non-specific to a given entrepreneurial project and should present aggregate data of
the entrepreneurial field in order to make learners realize the full picture.
From an educational perspective, entrepreneurial concepts may be tacit and difficult
to explain and understand by learners, regardless of their managerial academic back-
ground. However, as a positive aspect, if they are going to set up their own business,
they may be really enthusiastic about entrepreneurship, new management methods and
the economic prospects of their idea. This enthusiasm allows the lecturer to motivate
learners with a practical perspective based on self-application of entrepreneurship. A
different situation arises with those learners who do not specifically aim to set up a
business and who may consider businessmen’s interests being against those of workers’.
Therefore, a first aspect is to provide these learners with a thorough understanding of
the role of businessmen in society.
As a conclusion, when addressing adult education in entrepreneurship three ap-
proaches should be considered:
Entrepreneurship is an essential capitalist mechanism for people to enter the economic
mainstream and their access to the pursuit of economic success (Kuratko, 2005); there-
fore, the social and economic perspectives of entrepreneurs should focus on the im-
pacts and results of entrepreneurship (seek for profit, altruism, self-realization motiva-
tion, self-employment, increasing personal or shareholder wealth or achieving social
welfare).
Second, do entrepreneurs possess distinctive psychological and sociological personal
traits that make them be different to any individual? And if so it is, should people be
pushed or precluded from being entrepreneurs?.
Third, the managerial entrepreneurial process, that should address aspects such as
sources of opportunities, the process of discovery, the evaluation and exploitation of
ideas and the factors that foster innovation, allow for a better management of start-ups
and access to venture capital.
Finally, there is no doubt that entrepreneurship is performed by persons, but or-
ganizations must also be entrepreneurial if they are to survive in times of increased
globalization and tremendous market and technological change. Corporate entrepre-
neurship in both for profit and not for profit organizations involves the study of entre-
preneurial processes and principles as applied in established organizations.
Andragogy in entrepreneurship: a hands-on approach
In 1985, Vesper (1985) described that the initial entrepreneurship courses, labeled
variously “Entrepreneurship” or “New Venture Creation,” had “standard” contents such
as “(I) venture design projects, (2) case studies, (3) readings and (4) lectures by guest
speakers and the instructor”. It was a hands-on experiential method of presenting the
topic and his research was more pedagogical than content based.
Actual university entrepreneurship programs should begin by recognizing the im-
portance of constant relationship with the real arena of business: the outside world. A
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
63
second aspect relates to the need to implement an andragogy methodology to accom-
plish entrepreneurial education. Theory, case studies, guest speakers, business plans,
consulting activities or internships in entrepreneurial ventures are the main ways used
to teach and let adult learners experience entrepreneurship. In fact, these methodolo-
gies have been traditionally implemented in the in the management field. However, in
entrepreneurship, it is essential to share with students the expertise, experiences and
perspectives of businessmen or entrepreneurs, which can thus be used as examples.
In this section, we share the different approaches, in addition to business plan devel-
opment, that have been put into practice to teach and lecture entrepreneurship at the
University of Oviedo with both the aim of teaching and educating in entrepreneurship.
Since 2008, the author has been in charge of the entrepreneurial practices performed at
the University of Oviedo for its students and graduates. This has led to the design and
implementation of training programs for adults and to the provision of training and
educative programs about entrepreneurship. Different activities have been performed
with the aim of fostering entrepreneurial mind-sets and helping would-be entrepre-
neurs to analyze, focus and improve their business ideas. The following paragraphs
summarize some of these practices. The activities shown do not provide a set of best
practices, but are a sample of different activities that can be performed to educate and
teach adults in the entrepreneurial literacy taking onto consideration that having an idea
does not necessarily mean being literate in how to implement it. Specific activities re-
lated to spin offs are out of the scope of this paper. This section is mainly descriptive;
though a summary of the approaches and their focus on attitudes, skills and capabilities
is presented at the end of the paper in table 2.
The business idea contest: elevator pitch
Already in its sixth edition, the university entrepreneurial idea contest is a mix of eleva-
tor pitch contest and a course on basis small business management. It is targeted to stu-
dents and graduates who have a business idea related to their studies. Since the Univer-
sity of Oviedo is a generalist university, there are students from science, humanities,
social sciences, engineering and medical studies. Therefore, the range of participants is
really wide and their level of knowledge of the entrepreneur and firm formation proc-
ess is diverse and very limited. As a positive aspect, participating in the program con-
nects students with other colleagues from other fields of expertise and broadens the
perspective of the academic studies. In the contest are valued: how the idea is presented
-and thus reinforces the importance of the communication approach in elevator pitches-
; and how well developed the idea is and its sustainability—hence, it reinforces more
traditional andragogy courses based on building the business plan for the idea-.
Participants are working on their real ideas. As such, and as it occurs in any entre-
preneurial setting there are divergent expectations amongst would-be entrepreneurs
(who may be over-optimistic about their ideas) and the potential investors and would
be exploiters (who may be realistic). It is thus reinforced the need of quick communica-
tion skills and basic business management tools to fully argument the advantages of the
idea proposed. The average number of teams participating in the contest is 12 and the
contest is performed during the academic course: February till early May as an addi-
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
64
tional course in the curriculum. As part of the contest, participants may attend a volun-
tary 20 hour long basic entrepreneurship and management course, which deals with the
following topics: creativity, business model, idea validation and analysis and critical
thinking; business canvas; business strengths, weaknesses opportunities and threats
analysis (SWOT analysis); financial management and marketing and communication
skills. This course is voluntary and free; though it may be undervalued due to the fact
that participants are passionate about of their ideas and over optimistic about their busi-
ness potential. Nevertheless, maintaining the voluntary aspect of the assistance to the
course is considered essential, since entrepreneurs must choose where to get their own
resources and are adults with the need of a free way of getting these resources.
Each team of would-be entrepreneurs is assigned business mentors who are entrepre-
neurs from the Local Young Entrepreneurial Association. Their role is to meet and
guide the would-be entrepreneurs to solve specific problems arising in their business
ideas and to give them pieces of advice arising from their expertise as well as introduce
them into the importance of networking. As part of the contest, participants must de-
velop an outline (8 pages maximum) of their business plan to give it to the jury. The
participants are recorded in the University TV studio for two minutes to promote their
idea or personal aspects. In the final gala, the video is shown and then the two minute
time controlled elevator pitch takes place with the participants answering the questions
posed by the jury. The participants may earn three different prices of 3.000; 2.000 and
1.000 euros, which do not necessarily have to be invested in a new business setting.
Participants explain that the contest is a great opportunity for them to analyze the
feasibility of their ideas (either individually or collectively); to think about the impor-
tance of some overlooked aspects related to setting up and managing a business which
they had not previously thought about; to improve their communication skills and to
get into contact with local entrepreneurs.
The Estincoacher project. Students becoming consultants and coachers for
ITC aided internationalization process at local micro-firms.
This project was financed in a competitive bid in 2011 by the Spanish Industry and
Trade Ministry, which is also competent in the deployment of the entrepreneurial pol-
icy. The purpose of the project was to provide the students with a first-hand experience
of entrepreneurship by being consultants for microbusiness in the region. 48 partici-
pants initiated the program. The project was structured in two different aspects. Par-
ticipants had to follow a pedagogical practically oriented management course dealing
with topics such as entrepreneurship, international trade management and ITC website
analysis. Then, in order to become the micro consultants, the participants had to pre-
sent a practical essay related to the topics covered in the course. As part of this second
task they should contact local businesses in order to promote among them the excel-
lences of national and international trade through the web. 11 students got a contract to
work for a month performing the consulting activity. Working by pairs they had to
contact the entrepreneurs who had initially expressed their interest to participate in the
program, visit them, analyze their business strategic value and provide a detailed analy-
sis of the possibilities to internationalize it, while giving them support in ITC and inter-
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
65
national trade. The students had a close contact with the local community, developed
communication skills and understood the reality and problems faced by the small and
micro-firms in the region. The students had to produce a basic summary that was given
to the companies.
Participants were happy with the project because they considered that it allowed
them to have a first-hand opportunity to meet local managers and to talk to them about
their businesses, their motivations and their interests. They were really concerned at
the fact that, despite lacking academic business backgrounds, local businessmen had a
clear and real perspective of their businesses. Students were really conscious of the
value of time in business and had to work in different sectors, while having to self-
organize themselves. Unfortunately, the project did not have a second edition due to
the lack of financing and to difficult bureaucratic conditions for the work to be per-
formed in companies.
Entrepreneur speaking series and company visits.
These activities aim to raise awareness of the important socio-economic role of entre-
preneurs. It is designed for students enrolled in the different courses of Business Ad-
ministration at the different schools and are also offered for students in the Entrepre-
neurship courses. The perspective is to provide students with the chance to talk to
young entrepreneurs who, in addition of presenting their companies, explain the ad-
vantages and disadvantages of setting a business based on their academic degree. Usu-
ally, the entrepreneurs have studied the same degree as the students they will be meet-
ing. The main advantage is that the talk provides a different way to contact with entre-
preneurs and that it breaks down with stereotypes about entrepreneurs. After the talks
a questionnaire is passed to the students. It is worth noting that the lowest mark is the
valuation of the entrepreneurs themselves, which is either linked to a culture mistrust
of entrepreneurs in such a unionized region as Asturias, is; or it may also be linked to
the fact that there is some distance between the speaker and the attendants to the talks.
A slightly different version of this first contact with entrepreneurs is the mandatory
interview for students in the Entrepreneurship courses. The focus is to contact a local
entrepreneur and write down an essay on the insights about the entrepreneur him/
herself and the business they are running. Usually, entrepreneurs explain the students
their difficulties. A different project is the company visit guided by different school
teachers. The results of the different programs are presented below. Students seem to
prefer more the company visits than the entrepreneur speaking series. Meeting with
entrepreneurs seems to be more relevant if the students have to pass them an inter-
view.
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
66
Figure 1. Entrepreneur speaking series
Figure 2. Company visits
The cinema forum on entrepreneurship
For young people, the transmission of tacit knowledge can be enhanced through audio-
visual technologies. These affect positively the development of new learning styles be-
cause visual images enhance comprehension. The fact that films are familiar attention-
capturing visual media that engage learners in a plot and encourage retention of the
knowledge acquired (Scherer and Baker, 1999) was used to provide entrepreneurial
education at the University of Oviedo. During the summers of 2010 and 2011 four
seminar courses were offered at the University of Oviedo, with a total assistance of 73
students from diverse Schools. The seminars were structured in four hour sessions initi-
ated by a lecture, followed by the visioning of a film and a debate. Each day, a different
theme was taken into consideration. The focus of the seminar was to create awareness
on business entrepreneurs, though its perspective was also educational and not teaching
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
67
entrepreneurship through a business plan.
Films were chosen as the andragogy mechanism because they facilitate observational
learning by means of exploiting visual imagery (Bumpus, 2005). However, this is not
enough to achieve an effective acquisition of knowledge; so prior to visioning the film a
small talk was given for students on the topic analyzed in the film. The conference is
essential because it differentiates between the surface and the depth structure of the
narratives. The surface structure refers to descriptions and illustrations of what, where
and when things occur. As films exaggerate, sensationalize and glamorize characters
and events, they may be conceived as superficial, not depth and not substance for the-
ory building, but they are enjoyable. However, the power of film narratives for training
relies in the fact that they constitute, construct, reflect and recreate versions of social
and organizational worlds. The teachers focused on the fact that the validity of films is
not based on their capability to build theory through statistic generalization, but on
their capability to develop naturalistic generalization (personal identification and famili-
arity of the viewer with the characters and plot; informing thus organizational and man-
agement practice) or analytic generalization (how the thesis advanced can inform the-
ory) (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004; Champoux, 1999).
An evaluation was passed to the students on both the pedagogical method and the
knowledge and perception of entrepreneurship.
Regarding the methodology, watching a film is considered to be more interesting
than reading a book and, therefore, it is preferred by the learners. This perspective is
increased after viewing the film. Therefore, the motivating effect of films is confirmed.
Learners were also convinced that a film could help them to understand better theoreti-
cal concepts, since they recognize that viewing films is a good practice to explain some
theoretical concepts. Students did not consider very important to have a basic handout
of the film prior to viewing it. After viewing it, they valued it very positively increasing
its importance.
Table 1: Assessment of the methodology
Figures 3 and 4 show the answers given to the questions before the seminar (in blue)
and after the seminar (in red). Figure 3 shows the positive incidence of the seminar on
the perception of entrepreneurs, helping to destroy well embedded perspectives of
entrepreneurs and facilitating a better knowledge of their personal and social
characteristics and motivations. The tendencies in the answers are positive, except for
the reasons to start up a new venture that have been considered only of an economic
nature. Entrepreneurs are perceived to be people who sacrifice their life in pursuit of a
vocation, who have special personality traits and need a strong support from their
METHODOLOGY
BEFO-
RE
AF-
TER
EFFECT
I rather see a film tan read a book chapter to have concepts explained 7,6 8,95 + 1,35
A film can help me understand well academic concepts 7,6 9,26 + 1,66
It is necessary to have a previous résumé of the film and of the ques-
tions for debate
7,15 8,79
+ 1,64
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
68
family and social networks. Entrepreneurs are therefore special, anyone can be an
entrepreneur despite their age and students do not perceive entrepreneur women to
have more difficulties than entrepreneur men to pursue their goals –perception that is
enhanced after the seminar.
Figure 3: Perceptions of the entrepreneurs
Figure 4 shows (on the next page) the results for the entrepreneurial process from idea
to new venture development. It is important to highlight the relevance of novelty given
to the new venture and the importance granted to design and craft a good business
plan, which has been considered as a managerial tool rather than an instrument to get
financial resources. However, it is awkward that the students consider the importance
of chance in the development of new ideas, in detriment of research and expertise. This
leads to build an excuse not to become an entrepreneur for not being creative or lucky.
Data also supports that after the seminar, students value more the strategic dimension
of the business management and market access than financial resources. This implies
that students acknowledge the importance of making a responsible idea viability analy-
sis. The positive effects of the seminar are that there is a better understanding of the
economic and social role of entrepreneurs and that it is essential to carefully plan the
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
69
process in order to increase the likelihood of being successful. Nevertheless, it is im-
portant to highlight that after the seminars, the entrepreneurial mind-set was changed
and students now felt there may be entrepreneurs within large companies as well,
building therefore on the concept of intra-entrepreneurship and putting distance be-
tween entrepreneurship and venture creation.
Figure 4: Perceptions of the entrepreneurial process
The social entrepreneurship project
As part of the Entrepreneurship course, and being graded, final year students in the
accounting and finance degree at the Business School had to develop a social entrepre-
neurial project. The students working in groups had to choose a Non-governmental
organization (NGO) and define a strategy to get money for this project. The project
gave birth to the First Social Project day at the School of Business. The students chose 4
different social NGO for sick children, prevention and rehabilitation of women prosti-
tutes, support for accident injuries and collection of bottle taps for sick children. They
decided to sell products, perform two lotteries with products given by local shops and
the main region’s soccer teams and to collect taps in the Business school. This hands-on
project was performed at the same time as the development of a business plan for new
ventures in a nearby local community, following a more traditional approach to lectur-
ing through business plans. In the specific case of the social project, no written reports
had to be delivered, but the students had to set their objectives and had to fulfil them.
In order to give the maximum resonance to the projects, they performed a show to
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
70
make the formal presentation of their NGO and had a magician performing an act.
Despite the amount of work it meant for the students, and the short time they had
to produce the projects and get the necessary resources (less than two months); the
students valued this as the most positive activity they had done in the course because
they had total freedom to define their project and they felt really passionate about it
(contrary to the development of the business plan, which was considered by them as an
academic duty). With the social project, they got the passion needed to get resources,
solve by themselves the problems encountered and value positively the social aspect of
their actions. Additionally, the fact that there were four groups competing created as
short of market competition to achieve the desired goals. However, the fact that the
groups had to produce a single social project day implied that they also had to collabo-
rate to get additional resources and support for the presentation of the projects.
The Creativity Seminars
In these seminars, that are offered as an intensive week-long 30 hour transversal
courses for any student at the University of Oviedo, different artists are invited to give
a theoretical and practical speech on the role of creativity as a competitive advantage in
their businesses.
The purpose of the course is to make the students understand that not all innova-
tions arise from a technical field and that they could make their living just leaving their
creativity flow. The young artists explain the students how they run their businesses
and which are the main difficulties that they have found. At the same time, creativity is
developed and enhanced among the students, making them understand that creativity is
necessary to give a solution to any personal or business problem.
The invited artists range from technology and scientific researchers in the automo-
tive and chemistry fields to cloth designers, painters, cooks, singers and musicians, pho-
tographers, owners of an advertising company, decorators, writers and so on. The stu-
dents have to build in groups and under the surveillance of one of the speakers an artis-
tic project from scrap. This, seems the most difficult task for them to do, because they
feel they are not suited to be creative, nor they allow themselves to be so. As a result,
they have to make group decisions and find the necessary resources to produce a hand
craft painting. The students have to produce an essay on how their creativity has been
enhanced by the course. They are also asked to report which are the most influential
aspects they have got from each speaker in the seminar.
Usually, the students discover that they are more creative than they thought, that
team-working facilitates and enhances the development of tasks and that intangible as-
sets can also be the source of a sustainable competitive advantage. As it was stated by
one Chemistry student: I never thought that to become a chemist you had to be creative. I
thought creativity was the domain of humanities and social sciences.
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
71
Table 2: Syntheses of the andragogy approaches towards entrepreneurship literacy
Final considerations
In this paper, a revision of 6 andragogy approaches to teach and educate adult people in
the field of entrepreneurship has been presented. Without neglecting the importance of
building a business plan and of individual counselling, would-be entrepreneurs need
tools for autonomous work. In fact, entrepreneurs should be passionate for their ideas
and should be capable to overcome any limitations they may face while setting up their
businesses. In the specific case of the University of Oviedo the philosophy backing our
entrepreneurial programs is to enhance critical thinking, autonomous solution to prob-
lems and, definitively, to make students and would be entrepreneurs the owners of
Activity Attitudes Skills Compe-
tencies
Objective Evaluation
Elevator
pitch and
business
model
Initiative,
self effec-
tiveness
Creativity,
analitic
thinking,
networking
Small
business
skills
Teaching
Develop an
idea and
know better
a small
business
It is an opportunity to
analyze the feasibility of
the idea; think manage-
rially; communication
skills; learn from entre-
preneurs
Students as
coachers for
ITC and
internation-
alization at
local micro-
firms
Self effi-
cacy,
structural
behavior,
achieve-
ment
Analytic
thinking,
networking,
adaptability
Small
business
diagnosis
& re-
porting
Teaching &
Educating
Develop an
idea and
know better
a small
business
Direct contact with local
managers; conscious-
ness of the value of time
in business; self-
organization
Entrepre-
neur speak-
ing series,
interviews
and com-
pany visits
In the
interviews
initiative
and risk
assump-
tion
Networking Practical
know
how
Educating
Awareness
of entrepre-
neurs
Accessing to new infor-
mation and new per-
spectives
Cinema
forum on
Entrepre-
neurship
Practical
know
how;
report-
ing
Educating
Awareness
of entrepre-
neurs
Access to new informa-
tion and new perspec-
tives
Social entre-
preneurship
Initiative,
risk pro-
pensity;
structural
behavior
Creativity;
analytic
thinking;
networking
Team
working
Educating &
Teaching
Develop an
idea; aware-
ness of
entrepre-
neurs
total freedom to define
their project and they
felt really passionate
about it to get to get
resources, solve prob-
lems; market competi-
tion and collaboration
The Creativ-
ity Seminars
Creativity;
analytic
thinking;
networking
Educating
Know better
a small
business;
awareness
of entrepre-
neurs
Are more creative than
thought, team work
enhances the develop-
ment of tasks; intangible
assets are source of
sustainability; creativity
is not only the domain of
humanities and social
sciences
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
72
their decision making. After all, innovation, risk assumptions and failure and learning
by doing are key aspects entrepreneurs should possess. Additionally creating awareness
of the positive effects of entrepreneurship at a societal and economic level are also con-
sidered.
Towards developing a set of attitudes, skills and competencies relevant for entrepre-
neurship and entrepreneurial mind-set, the six mentioned programs have been devel-
oped. They have been presented as an example of different approaches to make attrac-
tive the field of entrepreneurship. Table 2 summarizes the main aspects analyzed in the
case studies. As in any andragogy or pedagogical training program, the objective sought
conditions the methodology implemented. In our specific case in some programs an
educational approach was followed, whereas in others the learning one was predomi-
nant. The programs presented are the result of an evolution on the development of a
new focus towards entrepreneurship in our institution. In any case, due to the limited
size of Asturias (one million inhabitants) and to the previous existence of business incu-
bators performing training and counselling, our scope was not to substitute them, but
to collaborate with them in the achievement of more entrepreneurial students. The
traditional focus of academic studies in technical specialization leaves scope for a trans-
versal course on entrepreneurship that both provides insights about the management of
a firm or capability to detect opportunities; thus reducing entrepreneurial illiteracy.
However, if there is no a specific project in mind setting that program through a busi-
ness plan course is really a difficult task, which may be neglected by the students. The 6
approaches presented may serve as an example on how to implement creative programs
in the field of entrepreneurship despite the risk of failures or not being fully under-
stood.
Correspondence
Guillermo Pérez-Bustamante, Ph. D.
Associate Professor in Business Organization
Manager of employability of the University of Oviedo since 2008
UNIVERSITY OF OVIEDO
FACULTAD DE ECONOMÍA Y EMPRESA.
Avda del Cristo S/n
33007 Oviedo- Spain
Email: [email protected]
Tel.: +34985104974
DEVELOPING ENTREPRENEURIAL LITERACY AT UNIVERSITY: A HANDS-ON APPROACH
73
NOTES
1. In the mid-twentieth century scholars from psychology and sociology researched the
field with an interest in the entrepreneur as an individual and started to study the key
traits and the personality of the entrepreneur. This focus occupied a prominent position
in entrepreneurship research during the 1960s and 1970s. The best known study in this
respect is David McClelland’s work The Achieving Society (1961), in which he argued
that norms and values in a society, particularly with respect to the ‘need for achieve-
ment’, are of vital importance for economic development (Landström et al. 2012,
1155). In the 80`s the foundation of academic entrepreneurship research was set. While
early studies on entrepreneurship were centered on the question of how the personality
or background of the entrepreneur determines entrepreneurial behavior, recognizing
and exploiting opportunity became the essence of entrepreneurial behavior as well as the
defining processes of entrepreneurship (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000).
2. The specific domain of entrepreneurship could be defined as: How entrepreneurs iden-
tify opportunities, formulate business ideas, and evaluate them.
3. How the business ideas formulated by entrepreneurs affect their decisions to exploit
opportunities, as well as what influence the difficulty and risk inherent in the pursuit of
opportunities have on the exploitation decision.
4. How the context influences the identification and exploitation of opportunities
5. The process by which people exploit opportunities within existing organizations
6. The process of identifying and exploiting high-potential opportunities and internationali-
zation.
7. How is this process temporally ordered, its rationality and planning; or even if there
should be any optimal process at all.
8. In 1970 Malcolm Knowles published The modern practice of adult education and focused on
andragogy rather than pedagogy as teaching method. It is not the scope of this paper to
discuss Knowles’ propositions, but we support its application to entrepreneurial educa-
tion due to its scope.
9. (for an extended version please consult Pérez-Bustamante et alt. 2012).
GUILLERMO PÉREZ-BUSTAMANTE
74
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