Description
This particular explanation around enterprise in education educating tommorrows entrepreneurs.
Pentti Mankinen 2007 1/19
Allan Gibb
Professor, Small Business Management
Durham University
ENTERPRISE IN EDUCATION
EDUCATING TOMMORROWS ENTREPRENEURS
Abstract
The overall objective of this article is to provide a review of the main issues to be consid-
ered in the introduction of the 'entrepreneurship' concept into the educational curriculum.
The context is that of the renewed political interest in this issue across Europe. The issues
that are reviewed include: what is entrepreneurship in an educational context; what it is not
- some sources of confusion and why they matter; why the issue is of growing importance;
entrepreneurship in the education establishment context, in the 'classroom' and in the
teacher; the importance of clarifying objectives and desirable outcomes; the needs of dif-
ferent groups; gateways into the curriculum; assessment and accreditation; and finally the
role of business and the community.
Entrepreneurship is defined in terms of sets of behaviours, attributes and skills that allow
individuals and groups to create change and innovation, cope with and even enjoy higher
levels of uncertainty and complexity. It is argued that the necessary knowledge base is
largely a function of the context of these behaviours. Entrepreneurship is not seen as be-
ing synonymous with being 'business-like' in the formal administrative sense. Nor should it
be taken to be synonymous with core skills or transferable personal skills. It is more than
both. Failure to clarify this can lead to many confusions.
The argument is pursued that higher levels of individual and organisational entrepreneur-
ship will be required in the general. Entrepreneurial approaches in the classroom will de-
mand high levels of teacher competence. Entrepreneurship education can have different
goals and outcomes. Key areas are set out, ranging from new venture creation to devel-
opment of personal entrepreneurial skills. The various gateways into the curriculum are
described and issues relating to progression are explored. The importance of considering
the needs of different groups is underlined. Existing models can be used as a basis for
initiatives but their entrepreneurial component will have to be very carefully considered.
Finally the role of business and the community is briefly explored in particular the respon-
sibilities relating to the use of 'external' mentors/teachers and the need for them to have a
background in entrepreneurship and a capacity to 'teach' in an entrepreneurial fashion.
Introduction
Over the past two decades there has been a growing debate about how well educational
systems prepare young people for adult life in general and ‘enterprise’ in the world of work
Pentti Mankinen 2007 2/19
in particular. This debate recognises the need for societies, organisations and individual
citizens to improve their capacity to cope with an increasingly competitive, uncertain and
complex world involving higher rates of innovation and change. While the concept of ‘en-
terprise’ is ambiguous enough to embrace a wide range of educational initiatives covering
industry awareness, business management, new venture creation and the development of
personal and social skill among others, there is an increasing awareness of entrepreneur-
ship as a distinct educational challenge that needs to be addressed.
This need raises several major issues for educational systems. The most important is that
of how to define and operationalise the ‘entrepreneurship’ concept in an educational con-
text. Secondly, in an area of much confusion, there is a need to be quite clear as to under-
lying rationale for intervention in education in this respect. Thirdly, there is a need to con-
sider what entrepreneurial educational initiatives mean for the organisation of schools col-
leges and universities and for teacher competence. There needs to be greater intellectual
understanding of then concept and its importance and relevance to mainstream education
if is to become embedded within the standard curriculum as opposed to being an ‘add-on’
in certain classes.
Finally there is a range of questions relevant to the ‘process’ of developing entrepreneurial
initiatives in education institutions. These include: how to establish clear objectives and
targets; how to distinguish between the needs of different groups within the education sys-
tem; how to make decisions as to where entrepreneurship might fit into the curriculum at
different levels (primary, secondary, further and higher education); deciding how to assess
and accredit entrepreneurship education; and how to establish the most effective links be-
tween the business community and education in this respect. This article will briefly ad-
dress each of these issues.
Concept into practice
There has been academic debate about the notion of entrepreneurship for several centu-
ries and still there is little agreement. Much of the academic contribution seems more con-
cerned with identifying further researchable questions than with meeting the needs of prac-
titioners. There is almost universal agreement, however, that entrepreneurship is centrally
concerned with the way that individuals and organisations create and implement new
ideas and ways of doing things, respond proactively to the environment and thus provoke
change involving various degrees of uncertainty and complexity. In the educational con-
text it is the behaviours associated with entrepreneurship that are important. These behav-
iours, widely associated with the more generic notion of an ‘enterprising person’ are
spelt out in the next page. Underpinning these behaviours are certain skills and attributes.
There has been much academic debate about whether the attributes can be developed in
individuals or are the product of genetics. The weight of opinion supports the notion that
they can be influenced considerably. Knowledge is a contextual element in ‘developing’
behaviours in education. For example it is possible to encourage entrepreneurial behav-
iour within the context of the standard curriculum subjects such as language and literature,
mathematics, geography, history, science and so on. It is also possible to address it within
a more specific business education context, for example via the task of creating a new
venture where the knowledge base will be substantially related to the process of venture
start-up and the associated tasks and learning requirements. It is important to recognise
that, in taking this approach, skills in themselves will also have a knowledge context relat-
ing to the task in hand.
Pentti Mankinen 2007 3/19
Accepting the above view, entrepreneurship/enterprise can therefore be defined as follows
for educational purposes:
‘Behaviours, skills and attributes applied individually and/or collectively to
help individuals and organisations of all kinds to create, cope with and en-
joy change and innovation involving higher levels of uncertainty and com-
plexity as a means of achieving personal fulfilment’
It is important to note that this definition embraces organisations of all kinds. It is not
solely a function of business activity. There are social entrepreneurs, educational entre-
preneurs, religious entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in a range of non-governmental or-
ganisations.
The behaviours most commonly associated with the entrepreneur in the literature are
shown in Exhibit 1. In general they paint the image of the active person who gets things
done, thinks strategically on his/her feet and harnesses resources imaginatively.
Exhibit 1
Entrepreneurial Behaviours
• opportunity seeking and grasping
• taking initiatives to make things happen]
• solving problems creatively
• managing autonomously
• taking responsibility for, and ownership of, things
• seeing things through
• networking effectively to manage interdependence
• putting things together creatively
• using judgement to take calculated risks.
Backing up these behaviours are a number of attributes which, it is argued, can be devel-
oped, although undoubtedly nature endowed some individuals with more, and different,
mixes of these than others. They support the notion of an individual or team wanting to
achieve, and be capable of driving, change through new ideas and innovations rather than
sitting back and responding to events.
Exhibit 2
Entrepreneurial Attributes
• achievement orientation and ambition
• self confidence and self belief
• perseverance
• high internal locus of control (autonomy)
• action orientation
• preference for learning by doing
• hardworking
• determination
• creativity.
Pentti Mankinen 2007 4/19
Unlike attributes, it is possible to assert with more authority that the skills commonly asso-
ciated with entrepreneurship can be developed. These skills are tightly tied to entrepreneu-
rial attributes and support the pursuit of behaviours as identified in Exhibit 3.
Exhibit 3
Entrepreneurial Skills
• creative problem solving
• persuading
• negotiating
• selling
• proposing
• holistically managing business/projects/situations
• strategic thinking
• intuitive decision making under uncertainty
• networking.
Entrepreneurship is different from business.
It is very important not to confuse entrepreneurship with just being ‘business-like’ or indeed
‘professional’ in the administrative management sense. Such confusion is dangerous.
Many of the mechanisms and associated values and beliefs of corporate and administra-
tive management are the antithesis of entrepreneurship (see the left-hand side of Exhibit 4
below). Yet at times they are brought into the educational curriculum, and sometimes
educational management systems, under the entrepreneurship label.
Exhibit 4*
Values in Organisation Design
Government/corporate
(looking for)
entrepreneurial small business
(as being)
Order Untidy
Formality Informal
Accountability Trusting
Information Observing
clear demarcation Overlapping
Planning Intuitive
Corporate strategy ‘Tactically strategic’
control measures ‘I do it my way’
formal standards Personally observed
Transparency Ambiguous
Functional expertise Holistic
Systems ‘Feely’
Positional authority Owner managed
Formal performance appraisal Customer/network exposed
* Adapted from (Gibb 2000)
Pentti Mankinen 2007 5/19
The entrepreneurial organisation, particularly when it is small, can be characterised as
closer to the right hand side of the table. Large organisations have been dramatically
downsizing and decentralising over the past decade or so in search for flexibility associ-
ated with being more to the right. Young people in the future are more likely to find them-
selves working in organisations closer to the entrepreneurial mode.
In the developing country context it can be argued that the two columns in the table char-
acterise the divide between the ‘modern’ corporate and bureaucratic sector and culture
and the massive informal sector of micro business. The divide is clearly evident through
Asia, Africa and Latin America and is unfortunately now manifesting itself in the transition
economies. The lack of real empathy between the two sides means that building relation-
ships based upon trust is difficult and without this the emergence of a dynamic entrepre-
neurial and independently owned middle business sector is almost impossible.
In the transition economies, it is the absence of an entrepreneurial culture among the
stakeholder environment of banks, professional services, government, regulatory authori-
ties and the education sector that prevents the legitimisation of entrepreneurial activity.
The result is the channelling of most of the emergent individual entrepreneurial behaviour
into the informal sector or criminal activity.
Education underpins culture. The lesson that needs to be taken from the above argument
is that entrepreneurship education is for everyone not just the small business entrepre-
neur. Unless this is accepted then the emerging independent business sector will always
face substantial barriers to growth, and entrepreneurial energy will be siphoned off into
deviancy.
In the educational and management context it is important to understand that entrepre-
neurship is embodied in sets of values and beliefs relating to ways of doing, seeing, feeling
evaluating and communicating things. This is reflected in turn in ways of organising things
and, importantly for education, ways of learning things.
Another common mistake is to assume that entrepreneurial behaviours, skills and attrib-
utes are synonymous with interpersonal or transferable skills. They are not. Problem
solving is very different from creative problem solving. Communication, presentation skills,
numeracy and literacy underpin entrepreneurial skills but are not at all identical with them.
It is perfectly possible to utilise, fully, conventional interpersonal skills in bureaucratic oc-
cupations and organisations.
Overall, a greater focus upon entrepreneurship in the education system will demand a re-
examination and questioning of many existing education/industry models which claim to be
entrepreneurial and are not. It is, for example, perfectly possible to have substantial work
experience programmes in education that are not in the least entrepreneurial in nature.
There are many ‘new venture’ programmes that are not organised in a particularly entre-
preneurial manner. Individual projects may be undertaken by students, and business
knowledge accumulated by this means, without any notion of the experience being entre-
preneurial.
Pentti Mankinen 2007 6/19
Entrepreneurship for the future
Why is the question of entrepreneurship in the education system becoming more impor-
tant? The simple answer is that we are living in a society that is increasingly demanding
entrepreneurial behaviours of all kinds. Most of the political and policy statements concern-
ing the need for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial education are wrapped up in the
rhetoric of international competitiveness. But to provide more convincing arguments for a
greater emphasis upon entrepreneurship demands more careful analysis and projection of
the world in which the youth of tomorrow will live. We need to understand why and how
individuals will be faced with higher levels of uncertainty and complexity. Space does not
permit full analysis here: but the pressures for greater individual and collective entrepre-
neurial behaviour, in response to global pressures upon society, organisations and indi-
viduals are summarised below (see Exhibit 5 below).
Exhibit 5
Greater uncertainty
and complexity
- the need for an
entrepreneurial response
Why it is important to get it right
Education and the Changing World
Global Pressures
State
repositioning
Organisation
repositioning
Individual repositioning
At the global level, many factors combine to bring much greater opportunity but also
greater uncertainty including political realignments, reduced trade barriers, the greater sig-
nificance of information and communication technologies, higher rates of product and
technological obsolescence, wide product differentiation, international standards for busi-
ness, greater opportunities for travel and personal transfer, the growth of the English lan-
guage as an international medium of exchange, different lifestyle choices and the impact
of massive international capital flows.
At the societal level there are many factors contributing to greater complexity and uncer-
tainty. These include: the withdrawal of the boundaries of the state, public spending pres-
sures and reductions, privatisation, deregulation, the creation of ‘markets’ in public ser-
vices, the outsourcing of social services, more business involvement in partnerships with
governments, and resulting new forms of governance including non-governmental organi-
sations, the growing use of business methods in all walks of life, standards setting and
benchmarking, the growing impact of pressure groups in society, the legitimisation of ac-
tivities earlier thought of as deviant, the decline of religion, mounting concerns over the
environment, the growing power of minority rights groups, and the increasing propensity to
challenge issues in courts of law.
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The same climate of growing complexity and uncertainty presents itself at the organisa-
tional level. Downsizing, delayering, decentralisation, re-engineering, higher levels of sub-
contracting, new forms of purchasing partnerships and strategic alliances are increasingly
the norm world-wide. These changes are accompanied by greater capital mobility, inter-
national sourcing, spin-outs and spin-offs, the impact of software on virtual reality man-
agement, mergers/alliances and global company rationalisations, demands for greater
flexibility in the workforce and the mobility of personnel, and the growth of small, profes-
sional, white collar small business linked with the increasing dominance of the human
knowledge base of the company over that of physical assets.
As a reflection of everything above, the individual is faced in the work environment with
greater career, rewards and job uncertainty, a greater probability of part-time and contract
employment, greater pressure for geographical mobility, more pressure and wider respon-
sibility at work and more stress. At home he/she is increasingly likely to be divorced, to be
a single parent, to have multiple relationships, to be faced with a reduced public social se-
curity net and as a result with a greater imperative to make provision for own pension ar-
rangements, take responsibility for owning things, and for managing credit. As a con-
sumer the individual is increasingly faced with a bewildering choice of products and ser-
vices about which there is growing information and with greater responsibility for choice in
learning.
If these scenarios are projected into the future then it is clear there will be a demand for all
kinds of entrepreneurial behaviours as set out earlier. If there is to be an educational re-
sponse of value then it must be sensitive to the factors identified above and the pressures
this will place upon the individual and the organisation.
The basic educational challenge
Much of what goes on currently in education under the label of entrepreneurship is an ‘add
on’ to the curriculum sometimes ‘taught’ by visiting business mentors. If, however, entre-
preneurship is really to be embedded in the education system then it must be reflected in
the culture of the education institution itself, the organisation of the classroom and the abil-
ity of the teacher.
It has long been evident from studies that maximising the contribution of entrepreneurial
behaviour to organisational effectiveness requires high degrees of decentralisation and
empowerment. Enterprise is the antithesis of command and control. The entrepreneurial
education establishment above will need to create a climate for teaching entrepreneurship
by designing itself to:
• Create and reinforce a strong sense of individual ownership, activities and outcomes
• Reinforce associated feelings of freedom and personal control to make things happen
• Maximise the opportunity for individuals to take responsibility for a wide and integrated
range of tasks
• Reinforce the notion of responsibility to see things through
• Strongly focus the organisation on defining as excellence through the eyes of its key
stakeholders (in the case of the school, the pupils, parents, staff, governors, feeder
schools, colleges and institutions of higher education, the local community, ‘competi-
tors’, business, church, local authorities and community associations)
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• Encourage staff to develop their own stakeholder networks in line with strategy
• Link rewards to satisfying stakeholder needs and thus school excellence
• Tolerate ambiguity and allow mistakes as a basis for learning
• Encourage strategic thinking before formal planning
• Emphasise the importance of personal trust and ‘know who’ as a basis for manage-
ment rather than via formal relationships
• Avoid too strict job and task demarcation and encourage informal overlap between de-
partments and groups as a basis for developing a common culture
• Build ways of learning, on-the-job, through staff development
If the institution ‘lives’ entrepreneurship then truly it will be able to give more support to risk
takers. The reward for entrepreneurial organisation is that teachers will be in a position to
gain considerable insight into the phenomenon they teach.
Entrepreneurship in the classroom
The challenge in bringing entrepreneurship into the classroom is to organise the classroom
around the structural characteristics identified above. The challenge is to allow young
people to experience and feel the concept rather than just learn about it in the conven-
tional sense. The leads to emphasis upon a pedagogy that encourages learning: by doing;
by exchange; by copying (and learning from the experience); by experimentation; by risk
taking and ‘positive’ mistake making; by creative problem solving; by feedback through
social interaction; by dramatisation and role playing; by close exposure to role models;
and, in particular, interaction with the outside/adult world.
Excellent teachers have always used such enterprising methods as learning vehicles. Yet
‘enterprising’ approaches are often seen to be part of ‘progressive’ and ‘trendy’ educa-
tional methods, opposed by those who look for more discipline in their classroom delivery
with a greater emphasis upon ‘rote’ learning. This prejudice will need to be overcome be-
fore substantive progress can be made in entrepreneurship education.
It seems perfectly possible to combine good exam results with the development of per-
sonal entrepreneurial skills by students, and to mix progressive with more traditional meth-
ods as appropriate. This is certainly the experience of Durham University Business School
in running programmes for many hundreds of teachers in the UK and across the world in
the past twelve years.
The ‘excellent’ teacher will take easily to the entrepreneurial concept and will see it as cen-
tral to educational objectives. The entrepreneurial teacher will be one who masters the art
of: knowing how much ownership and control of learning to give to students; maximising
social learning; encouraging student networking; developing motivation and commitment of
students to see things through; encouraging calculated risk taking; seeking and taking up
opportunities in an innovative fashion; and involving students in taking personal responsi-
bility for the development of their learning.
Pentti Mankinen 2007 9/19
The challenges ahead
If entrepreneurship education is to be taken more seriously, and become established as a
fundamental part of the curriculum, then a number of additional major issues need to be
addressed including: the setting of clear objectives; differentiating programmes to cater for
students with different needs; maximising the gateways into the curriculum; and finding
appropriate methods of assessment and accreditation.
Objectives and Outcomes
Introducing entrepreneurship into the curriculum in any institution will almost certainly
mean building upon existing education/industry/community links and related programmes.
In pursuing this, care will need to be taken in distinguishing between different objectives,
and in determining which approaches are most relevant to the institutions environment and
stakeholders. Decisions will need to be made on alternative strategies, for example
whether to focus upon specialist programmes or whether to build entrepreneurship into the
wider curriculum. Desired outcomes will need to be carefully considered. Some key ques-
tions are:
What are the Curriculum Objectives?
To create a capacity to start a new venture?
To provide insight into working in a small venture?
To develop ‘business’ understanding in general?
To develop personal ‘enterprising’ capabilities?
How might inputs be approached at different levels in Education?
At school?
At vocational institute?
At higher education institute?
At a business location?
The Programme Approach?
A specialist entrepreneurship programme?
Inserted into all core academic curriculum?
Introduce as extra-curricular programme?
Desired Outcome for Participants?
To have capacity to start a new venture?
To have capacity to work effectively in a small organisation?
To have capacity to work effectively in the flexible labour market?
To have the personal entrepreneurial skills to enjoy all aspects of life to
the full?
In practice there can be considerable overlap and integration between the above choices.
In terms of outcomes, for example, the need is to prepare young people for entering a
world of work where they are more likely to become part of the increasingly flexible labour
market. They will have to manage their lives in the societal, organisational and individual
Pentti Mankinen 2007 10/19
contexts described earlier. At the same time most, but not all, will work in small organisa-
tions. A number, a minority, will become self employed and or start a new venture of some
kind. It is important to recognise these choices in the process of careful objective setting.
It is equally important to note, however, that the outcomes set out above do not just focus
upon business but upon organisational settings for work of all kinds.
Students’ different needs
The above discussion of objectives, targets and outcomes is a reminder that within the
education system, different student groups have different needs that might be served by
entrepreneurship education. Within secondary schools there are many groups with varied
needs, for example: school leavers; low academic achievers; drop-outs; high academic
flyers; those who face unemployment; those heading towards higher or further education;
those who, because of their personal background, are more likely to engage in family
business activity; the disabled or special educational needs students; and women and eth-
nic minorities. Within Higher Education institutions needs will differ within different subject
areas and the motivations and potential of students will vary in this respect.
There are thus different needs at primary, secondary, tertiary and higher educational lev-
els. Primary school objectives are more likely to concentrate upon personal ‘enterprise’
development, cross curricular activity and socialisation with adults. Higher education ef-
forts may focus more upon the ‘hard’ business end of potential for exploiting personal skills
and knowledge gained, self-employment career orientation and business entrepreneur-
ship.
Gateways into the curriculum
Entrepreneurship, as it is defined above, can find its way into a broad swathe of the cur-
riculum. It can be introduced anywhere as part of the teaching process. Decisions about
what should be included and at which level follow from consideration of desired outcomes,
the needs of different groups and priorities, the dictate of the existing curriculum, notions of
progression and, importantly, the degree to which entrepreneurship training is regarded as
an ‘extra curricular’ activity rather than that of an intrinsic part of the school curriculum.
Assessment and accreditation
Assessment of entrepreneurial behaviours, attributes and skills as set out earlier is a for-
midable task. While there is some evidence that teachers can recognise entrepreneurial
behaviours, there is no common code for recognition, and no satisfactory current meas-
urement system that allows for behaviours to be coded comparatively and weighted, thus
enabling development progress over time to be monitored.
There are, however, proxies in terms of measuring and evaluating outcomes from entre-
preneurial processes, such as progress in project development and completion, and ‘inde-
pendent’ assessment of presentations. Some would argue that a business plan is a
measure but this is not altogether a satisfactory one. One can be very entrepreneurial in
producing a business plan or equally, the plan can be the result of a very formal and unin-
spiring process. Setting up and running a venture (real or simulated) is also another
measure perhaps nearer to the mark: but assessment of the degree of entrepreneurship
involved in the process and the personal development that results from this is very subjec-
tive indeed. Much work has been done in assessment of adult entrepreneurial attributes
Pentti Mankinen 2007 11/19
but has not yet been applied to the education system. Unless more progress is made in
methods of assessment, the issue of accreditation will be left on the back burner.
The way forward
Around the world, entrepreneurship and enterprise education is beginning to take hold.
Programmes with these labels have appeared in the school and higher education curricula
in India, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, Russia and many countries of Central and Eastern
Europe; also in Latin America and across Western Europe. The US leads in innovative
approaches: a visit to the EPCOT Center in Orlando, Florida provides a sharp flavour of
this.
There is therefore potential, world-wide to build more entrepreneurial approaches around
existing education, business and industry initiatives. Among common existing pro-
grammes that can be ‘entrepreneurially enhanced’ include those focused upon:
• Creating economic awareness among young people of all ages
• Creating a wider understanding of industry, business and management
• Developing understanding of small business and its management systems
• Introducing young people to the concept of new venture development via simulation
exercises in schools
• Developing transferable skills such as communication, presentation, negotiation, prob-
lem solving as well as IT competency
• Opening gateways to better career planning
• Providing work experience for students and teachers
• Creating business partnerships between schools and colleges and individuals or
groups of firms
The above list underlines the potential for the role of education/business partnering in en-
trepreneurship programmes. This article has argued that, if this is to be successful, great
care must be taken to find clear concepts and objectives so that the challenges of entre-
preneurship education are truly recognised and not confused with broader aspects of the
schools industry curriculum. The business community may need to be educated to de-
velop greater understanding of how the entrepreneurship curriculum goes beyond the
classroom to the culture of the education institution, its potential impact upon the organisa-
tion of classroom activity (perhaps redefining the classroom in this process) and the com-
petencies and development needs of teachers. The challenge is to build from existing
practice to achieve a more co-ordinated approach, taking the best from different pro-
grammes. Education and business collectively will need to reflect deeply upon issues of
progression.
Overall business will need to re-appraise its own competence in designing new ways of
preparing young people for the entrepreneurial challenge of the 21
st
century as set out
above. There will be a need for new kinds of partnerships between schools and business.
Business mentors will need different skills and will need training and development. The
Pentti Mankinen 2007 12/19
dialogue will need to proceed beyond ‘sound-bites’. Indeed without a substantial debate it
may be difficult to make much progress in this particular area of facing up to the educa-
tional challenge of the 21st century.
Pentti Mankinen 2007 13/19
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doc_642558243.pdf
This particular explanation around enterprise in education educating tommorrows entrepreneurs.
Pentti Mankinen 2007 1/19
Allan Gibb
Professor, Small Business Management
Durham University
ENTERPRISE IN EDUCATION
EDUCATING TOMMORROWS ENTREPRENEURS
Abstract
The overall objective of this article is to provide a review of the main issues to be consid-
ered in the introduction of the 'entrepreneurship' concept into the educational curriculum.
The context is that of the renewed political interest in this issue across Europe. The issues
that are reviewed include: what is entrepreneurship in an educational context; what it is not
- some sources of confusion and why they matter; why the issue is of growing importance;
entrepreneurship in the education establishment context, in the 'classroom' and in the
teacher; the importance of clarifying objectives and desirable outcomes; the needs of dif-
ferent groups; gateways into the curriculum; assessment and accreditation; and finally the
role of business and the community.
Entrepreneurship is defined in terms of sets of behaviours, attributes and skills that allow
individuals and groups to create change and innovation, cope with and even enjoy higher
levels of uncertainty and complexity. It is argued that the necessary knowledge base is
largely a function of the context of these behaviours. Entrepreneurship is not seen as be-
ing synonymous with being 'business-like' in the formal administrative sense. Nor should it
be taken to be synonymous with core skills or transferable personal skills. It is more than
both. Failure to clarify this can lead to many confusions.
The argument is pursued that higher levels of individual and organisational entrepreneur-
ship will be required in the general. Entrepreneurial approaches in the classroom will de-
mand high levels of teacher competence. Entrepreneurship education can have different
goals and outcomes. Key areas are set out, ranging from new venture creation to devel-
opment of personal entrepreneurial skills. The various gateways into the curriculum are
described and issues relating to progression are explored. The importance of considering
the needs of different groups is underlined. Existing models can be used as a basis for
initiatives but their entrepreneurial component will have to be very carefully considered.
Finally the role of business and the community is briefly explored in particular the respon-
sibilities relating to the use of 'external' mentors/teachers and the need for them to have a
background in entrepreneurship and a capacity to 'teach' in an entrepreneurial fashion.
Introduction
Over the past two decades there has been a growing debate about how well educational
systems prepare young people for adult life in general and ‘enterprise’ in the world of work
Pentti Mankinen 2007 2/19
in particular. This debate recognises the need for societies, organisations and individual
citizens to improve their capacity to cope with an increasingly competitive, uncertain and
complex world involving higher rates of innovation and change. While the concept of ‘en-
terprise’ is ambiguous enough to embrace a wide range of educational initiatives covering
industry awareness, business management, new venture creation and the development of
personal and social skill among others, there is an increasing awareness of entrepreneur-
ship as a distinct educational challenge that needs to be addressed.
This need raises several major issues for educational systems. The most important is that
of how to define and operationalise the ‘entrepreneurship’ concept in an educational con-
text. Secondly, in an area of much confusion, there is a need to be quite clear as to under-
lying rationale for intervention in education in this respect. Thirdly, there is a need to con-
sider what entrepreneurial educational initiatives mean for the organisation of schools col-
leges and universities and for teacher competence. There needs to be greater intellectual
understanding of then concept and its importance and relevance to mainstream education
if is to become embedded within the standard curriculum as opposed to being an ‘add-on’
in certain classes.
Finally there is a range of questions relevant to the ‘process’ of developing entrepreneurial
initiatives in education institutions. These include: how to establish clear objectives and
targets; how to distinguish between the needs of different groups within the education sys-
tem; how to make decisions as to where entrepreneurship might fit into the curriculum at
different levels (primary, secondary, further and higher education); deciding how to assess
and accredit entrepreneurship education; and how to establish the most effective links be-
tween the business community and education in this respect. This article will briefly ad-
dress each of these issues.
Concept into practice
There has been academic debate about the notion of entrepreneurship for several centu-
ries and still there is little agreement. Much of the academic contribution seems more con-
cerned with identifying further researchable questions than with meeting the needs of prac-
titioners. There is almost universal agreement, however, that entrepreneurship is centrally
concerned with the way that individuals and organisations create and implement new
ideas and ways of doing things, respond proactively to the environment and thus provoke
change involving various degrees of uncertainty and complexity. In the educational con-
text it is the behaviours associated with entrepreneurship that are important. These behav-
iours, widely associated with the more generic notion of an ‘enterprising person’ are
spelt out in the next page. Underpinning these behaviours are certain skills and attributes.
There has been much academic debate about whether the attributes can be developed in
individuals or are the product of genetics. The weight of opinion supports the notion that
they can be influenced considerably. Knowledge is a contextual element in ‘developing’
behaviours in education. For example it is possible to encourage entrepreneurial behav-
iour within the context of the standard curriculum subjects such as language and literature,
mathematics, geography, history, science and so on. It is also possible to address it within
a more specific business education context, for example via the task of creating a new
venture where the knowledge base will be substantially related to the process of venture
start-up and the associated tasks and learning requirements. It is important to recognise
that, in taking this approach, skills in themselves will also have a knowledge context relat-
ing to the task in hand.
Pentti Mankinen 2007 3/19
Accepting the above view, entrepreneurship/enterprise can therefore be defined as follows
for educational purposes:
‘Behaviours, skills and attributes applied individually and/or collectively to
help individuals and organisations of all kinds to create, cope with and en-
joy change and innovation involving higher levels of uncertainty and com-
plexity as a means of achieving personal fulfilment’
It is important to note that this definition embraces organisations of all kinds. It is not
solely a function of business activity. There are social entrepreneurs, educational entre-
preneurs, religious entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in a range of non-governmental or-
ganisations.
The behaviours most commonly associated with the entrepreneur in the literature are
shown in Exhibit 1. In general they paint the image of the active person who gets things
done, thinks strategically on his/her feet and harnesses resources imaginatively.
Exhibit 1
Entrepreneurial Behaviours
• opportunity seeking and grasping
• taking initiatives to make things happen]
• solving problems creatively
• managing autonomously
• taking responsibility for, and ownership of, things
• seeing things through
• networking effectively to manage interdependence
• putting things together creatively
• using judgement to take calculated risks.
Backing up these behaviours are a number of attributes which, it is argued, can be devel-
oped, although undoubtedly nature endowed some individuals with more, and different,
mixes of these than others. They support the notion of an individual or team wanting to
achieve, and be capable of driving, change through new ideas and innovations rather than
sitting back and responding to events.
Exhibit 2
Entrepreneurial Attributes
• achievement orientation and ambition
• self confidence and self belief
• perseverance
• high internal locus of control (autonomy)
• action orientation
• preference for learning by doing
• hardworking
• determination
• creativity.
Pentti Mankinen 2007 4/19
Unlike attributes, it is possible to assert with more authority that the skills commonly asso-
ciated with entrepreneurship can be developed. These skills are tightly tied to entrepreneu-
rial attributes and support the pursuit of behaviours as identified in Exhibit 3.
Exhibit 3
Entrepreneurial Skills
• creative problem solving
• persuading
• negotiating
• selling
• proposing
• holistically managing business/projects/situations
• strategic thinking
• intuitive decision making under uncertainty
• networking.
Entrepreneurship is different from business.
It is very important not to confuse entrepreneurship with just being ‘business-like’ or indeed
‘professional’ in the administrative management sense. Such confusion is dangerous.
Many of the mechanisms and associated values and beliefs of corporate and administra-
tive management are the antithesis of entrepreneurship (see the left-hand side of Exhibit 4
below). Yet at times they are brought into the educational curriculum, and sometimes
educational management systems, under the entrepreneurship label.
Exhibit 4*
Values in Organisation Design
Government/corporate
(looking for)
entrepreneurial small business
(as being)
Order Untidy
Formality Informal
Accountability Trusting
Information Observing
clear demarcation Overlapping
Planning Intuitive
Corporate strategy ‘Tactically strategic’
control measures ‘I do it my way’
formal standards Personally observed
Transparency Ambiguous
Functional expertise Holistic
Systems ‘Feely’
Positional authority Owner managed
Formal performance appraisal Customer/network exposed
* Adapted from (Gibb 2000)
Pentti Mankinen 2007 5/19
The entrepreneurial organisation, particularly when it is small, can be characterised as
closer to the right hand side of the table. Large organisations have been dramatically
downsizing and decentralising over the past decade or so in search for flexibility associ-
ated with being more to the right. Young people in the future are more likely to find them-
selves working in organisations closer to the entrepreneurial mode.
In the developing country context it can be argued that the two columns in the table char-
acterise the divide between the ‘modern’ corporate and bureaucratic sector and culture
and the massive informal sector of micro business. The divide is clearly evident through
Asia, Africa and Latin America and is unfortunately now manifesting itself in the transition
economies. The lack of real empathy between the two sides means that building relation-
ships based upon trust is difficult and without this the emergence of a dynamic entrepre-
neurial and independently owned middle business sector is almost impossible.
In the transition economies, it is the absence of an entrepreneurial culture among the
stakeholder environment of banks, professional services, government, regulatory authori-
ties and the education sector that prevents the legitimisation of entrepreneurial activity.
The result is the channelling of most of the emergent individual entrepreneurial behaviour
into the informal sector or criminal activity.
Education underpins culture. The lesson that needs to be taken from the above argument
is that entrepreneurship education is for everyone not just the small business entrepre-
neur. Unless this is accepted then the emerging independent business sector will always
face substantial barriers to growth, and entrepreneurial energy will be siphoned off into
deviancy.
In the educational and management context it is important to understand that entrepre-
neurship is embodied in sets of values and beliefs relating to ways of doing, seeing, feeling
evaluating and communicating things. This is reflected in turn in ways of organising things
and, importantly for education, ways of learning things.
Another common mistake is to assume that entrepreneurial behaviours, skills and attrib-
utes are synonymous with interpersonal or transferable skills. They are not. Problem
solving is very different from creative problem solving. Communication, presentation skills,
numeracy and literacy underpin entrepreneurial skills but are not at all identical with them.
It is perfectly possible to utilise, fully, conventional interpersonal skills in bureaucratic oc-
cupations and organisations.
Overall, a greater focus upon entrepreneurship in the education system will demand a re-
examination and questioning of many existing education/industry models which claim to be
entrepreneurial and are not. It is, for example, perfectly possible to have substantial work
experience programmes in education that are not in the least entrepreneurial in nature.
There are many ‘new venture’ programmes that are not organised in a particularly entre-
preneurial manner. Individual projects may be undertaken by students, and business
knowledge accumulated by this means, without any notion of the experience being entre-
preneurial.
Pentti Mankinen 2007 6/19
Entrepreneurship for the future
Why is the question of entrepreneurship in the education system becoming more impor-
tant? The simple answer is that we are living in a society that is increasingly demanding
entrepreneurial behaviours of all kinds. Most of the political and policy statements concern-
ing the need for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial education are wrapped up in the
rhetoric of international competitiveness. But to provide more convincing arguments for a
greater emphasis upon entrepreneurship demands more careful analysis and projection of
the world in which the youth of tomorrow will live. We need to understand why and how
individuals will be faced with higher levels of uncertainty and complexity. Space does not
permit full analysis here: but the pressures for greater individual and collective entrepre-
neurial behaviour, in response to global pressures upon society, organisations and indi-
viduals are summarised below (see Exhibit 5 below).
Exhibit 5
Greater uncertainty
and complexity
- the need for an
entrepreneurial response
Why it is important to get it right
Education and the Changing World
Global Pressures
State
repositioning
Organisation
repositioning
Individual repositioning
At the global level, many factors combine to bring much greater opportunity but also
greater uncertainty including political realignments, reduced trade barriers, the greater sig-
nificance of information and communication technologies, higher rates of product and
technological obsolescence, wide product differentiation, international standards for busi-
ness, greater opportunities for travel and personal transfer, the growth of the English lan-
guage as an international medium of exchange, different lifestyle choices and the impact
of massive international capital flows.
At the societal level there are many factors contributing to greater complexity and uncer-
tainty. These include: the withdrawal of the boundaries of the state, public spending pres-
sures and reductions, privatisation, deregulation, the creation of ‘markets’ in public ser-
vices, the outsourcing of social services, more business involvement in partnerships with
governments, and resulting new forms of governance including non-governmental organi-
sations, the growing use of business methods in all walks of life, standards setting and
benchmarking, the growing impact of pressure groups in society, the legitimisation of ac-
tivities earlier thought of as deviant, the decline of religion, mounting concerns over the
environment, the growing power of minority rights groups, and the increasing propensity to
challenge issues in courts of law.
Pentti Mankinen 2007 7/19
The same climate of growing complexity and uncertainty presents itself at the organisa-
tional level. Downsizing, delayering, decentralisation, re-engineering, higher levels of sub-
contracting, new forms of purchasing partnerships and strategic alliances are increasingly
the norm world-wide. These changes are accompanied by greater capital mobility, inter-
national sourcing, spin-outs and spin-offs, the impact of software on virtual reality man-
agement, mergers/alliances and global company rationalisations, demands for greater
flexibility in the workforce and the mobility of personnel, and the growth of small, profes-
sional, white collar small business linked with the increasing dominance of the human
knowledge base of the company over that of physical assets.
As a reflection of everything above, the individual is faced in the work environment with
greater career, rewards and job uncertainty, a greater probability of part-time and contract
employment, greater pressure for geographical mobility, more pressure and wider respon-
sibility at work and more stress. At home he/she is increasingly likely to be divorced, to be
a single parent, to have multiple relationships, to be faced with a reduced public social se-
curity net and as a result with a greater imperative to make provision for own pension ar-
rangements, take responsibility for owning things, and for managing credit. As a con-
sumer the individual is increasingly faced with a bewildering choice of products and ser-
vices about which there is growing information and with greater responsibility for choice in
learning.
If these scenarios are projected into the future then it is clear there will be a demand for all
kinds of entrepreneurial behaviours as set out earlier. If there is to be an educational re-
sponse of value then it must be sensitive to the factors identified above and the pressures
this will place upon the individual and the organisation.
The basic educational challenge
Much of what goes on currently in education under the label of entrepreneurship is an ‘add
on’ to the curriculum sometimes ‘taught’ by visiting business mentors. If, however, entre-
preneurship is really to be embedded in the education system then it must be reflected in
the culture of the education institution itself, the organisation of the classroom and the abil-
ity of the teacher.
It has long been evident from studies that maximising the contribution of entrepreneurial
behaviour to organisational effectiveness requires high degrees of decentralisation and
empowerment. Enterprise is the antithesis of command and control. The entrepreneurial
education establishment above will need to create a climate for teaching entrepreneurship
by designing itself to:
• Create and reinforce a strong sense of individual ownership, activities and outcomes
• Reinforce associated feelings of freedom and personal control to make things happen
• Maximise the opportunity for individuals to take responsibility for a wide and integrated
range of tasks
• Reinforce the notion of responsibility to see things through
• Strongly focus the organisation on defining as excellence through the eyes of its key
stakeholders (in the case of the school, the pupils, parents, staff, governors, feeder
schools, colleges and institutions of higher education, the local community, ‘competi-
tors’, business, church, local authorities and community associations)
Pentti Mankinen 2007 8/19
• Encourage staff to develop their own stakeholder networks in line with strategy
• Link rewards to satisfying stakeholder needs and thus school excellence
• Tolerate ambiguity and allow mistakes as a basis for learning
• Encourage strategic thinking before formal planning
• Emphasise the importance of personal trust and ‘know who’ as a basis for manage-
ment rather than via formal relationships
• Avoid too strict job and task demarcation and encourage informal overlap between de-
partments and groups as a basis for developing a common culture
• Build ways of learning, on-the-job, through staff development
If the institution ‘lives’ entrepreneurship then truly it will be able to give more support to risk
takers. The reward for entrepreneurial organisation is that teachers will be in a position to
gain considerable insight into the phenomenon they teach.
Entrepreneurship in the classroom
The challenge in bringing entrepreneurship into the classroom is to organise the classroom
around the structural characteristics identified above. The challenge is to allow young
people to experience and feel the concept rather than just learn about it in the conven-
tional sense. The leads to emphasis upon a pedagogy that encourages learning: by doing;
by exchange; by copying (and learning from the experience); by experimentation; by risk
taking and ‘positive’ mistake making; by creative problem solving; by feedback through
social interaction; by dramatisation and role playing; by close exposure to role models;
and, in particular, interaction with the outside/adult world.
Excellent teachers have always used such enterprising methods as learning vehicles. Yet
‘enterprising’ approaches are often seen to be part of ‘progressive’ and ‘trendy’ educa-
tional methods, opposed by those who look for more discipline in their classroom delivery
with a greater emphasis upon ‘rote’ learning. This prejudice will need to be overcome be-
fore substantive progress can be made in entrepreneurship education.
It seems perfectly possible to combine good exam results with the development of per-
sonal entrepreneurial skills by students, and to mix progressive with more traditional meth-
ods as appropriate. This is certainly the experience of Durham University Business School
in running programmes for many hundreds of teachers in the UK and across the world in
the past twelve years.
The ‘excellent’ teacher will take easily to the entrepreneurial concept and will see it as cen-
tral to educational objectives. The entrepreneurial teacher will be one who masters the art
of: knowing how much ownership and control of learning to give to students; maximising
social learning; encouraging student networking; developing motivation and commitment of
students to see things through; encouraging calculated risk taking; seeking and taking up
opportunities in an innovative fashion; and involving students in taking personal responsi-
bility for the development of their learning.
Pentti Mankinen 2007 9/19
The challenges ahead
If entrepreneurship education is to be taken more seriously, and become established as a
fundamental part of the curriculum, then a number of additional major issues need to be
addressed including: the setting of clear objectives; differentiating programmes to cater for
students with different needs; maximising the gateways into the curriculum; and finding
appropriate methods of assessment and accreditation.
Objectives and Outcomes
Introducing entrepreneurship into the curriculum in any institution will almost certainly
mean building upon existing education/industry/community links and related programmes.
In pursuing this, care will need to be taken in distinguishing between different objectives,
and in determining which approaches are most relevant to the institutions environment and
stakeholders. Decisions will need to be made on alternative strategies, for example
whether to focus upon specialist programmes or whether to build entrepreneurship into the
wider curriculum. Desired outcomes will need to be carefully considered. Some key ques-
tions are:
What are the Curriculum Objectives?
To create a capacity to start a new venture?
To provide insight into working in a small venture?
To develop ‘business’ understanding in general?
To develop personal ‘enterprising’ capabilities?
How might inputs be approached at different levels in Education?
At school?
At vocational institute?
At higher education institute?
At a business location?
The Programme Approach?
A specialist entrepreneurship programme?
Inserted into all core academic curriculum?
Introduce as extra-curricular programme?
Desired Outcome for Participants?
To have capacity to start a new venture?
To have capacity to work effectively in a small organisation?
To have capacity to work effectively in the flexible labour market?
To have the personal entrepreneurial skills to enjoy all aspects of life to
the full?
In practice there can be considerable overlap and integration between the above choices.
In terms of outcomes, for example, the need is to prepare young people for entering a
world of work where they are more likely to become part of the increasingly flexible labour
market. They will have to manage their lives in the societal, organisational and individual
Pentti Mankinen 2007 10/19
contexts described earlier. At the same time most, but not all, will work in small organisa-
tions. A number, a minority, will become self employed and or start a new venture of some
kind. It is important to recognise these choices in the process of careful objective setting.
It is equally important to note, however, that the outcomes set out above do not just focus
upon business but upon organisational settings for work of all kinds.
Students’ different needs
The above discussion of objectives, targets and outcomes is a reminder that within the
education system, different student groups have different needs that might be served by
entrepreneurship education. Within secondary schools there are many groups with varied
needs, for example: school leavers; low academic achievers; drop-outs; high academic
flyers; those who face unemployment; those heading towards higher or further education;
those who, because of their personal background, are more likely to engage in family
business activity; the disabled or special educational needs students; and women and eth-
nic minorities. Within Higher Education institutions needs will differ within different subject
areas and the motivations and potential of students will vary in this respect.
There are thus different needs at primary, secondary, tertiary and higher educational lev-
els. Primary school objectives are more likely to concentrate upon personal ‘enterprise’
development, cross curricular activity and socialisation with adults. Higher education ef-
forts may focus more upon the ‘hard’ business end of potential for exploiting personal skills
and knowledge gained, self-employment career orientation and business entrepreneur-
ship.
Gateways into the curriculum
Entrepreneurship, as it is defined above, can find its way into a broad swathe of the cur-
riculum. It can be introduced anywhere as part of the teaching process. Decisions about
what should be included and at which level follow from consideration of desired outcomes,
the needs of different groups and priorities, the dictate of the existing curriculum, notions of
progression and, importantly, the degree to which entrepreneurship training is regarded as
an ‘extra curricular’ activity rather than that of an intrinsic part of the school curriculum.
Assessment and accreditation
Assessment of entrepreneurial behaviours, attributes and skills as set out earlier is a for-
midable task. While there is some evidence that teachers can recognise entrepreneurial
behaviours, there is no common code for recognition, and no satisfactory current meas-
urement system that allows for behaviours to be coded comparatively and weighted, thus
enabling development progress over time to be monitored.
There are, however, proxies in terms of measuring and evaluating outcomes from entre-
preneurial processes, such as progress in project development and completion, and ‘inde-
pendent’ assessment of presentations. Some would argue that a business plan is a
measure but this is not altogether a satisfactory one. One can be very entrepreneurial in
producing a business plan or equally, the plan can be the result of a very formal and unin-
spiring process. Setting up and running a venture (real or simulated) is also another
measure perhaps nearer to the mark: but assessment of the degree of entrepreneurship
involved in the process and the personal development that results from this is very subjec-
tive indeed. Much work has been done in assessment of adult entrepreneurial attributes
Pentti Mankinen 2007 11/19
but has not yet been applied to the education system. Unless more progress is made in
methods of assessment, the issue of accreditation will be left on the back burner.
The way forward
Around the world, entrepreneurship and enterprise education is beginning to take hold.
Programmes with these labels have appeared in the school and higher education curricula
in India, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, Russia and many countries of Central and Eastern
Europe; also in Latin America and across Western Europe. The US leads in innovative
approaches: a visit to the EPCOT Center in Orlando, Florida provides a sharp flavour of
this.
There is therefore potential, world-wide to build more entrepreneurial approaches around
existing education, business and industry initiatives. Among common existing pro-
grammes that can be ‘entrepreneurially enhanced’ include those focused upon:
• Creating economic awareness among young people of all ages
• Creating a wider understanding of industry, business and management
• Developing understanding of small business and its management systems
• Introducing young people to the concept of new venture development via simulation
exercises in schools
• Developing transferable skills such as communication, presentation, negotiation, prob-
lem solving as well as IT competency
• Opening gateways to better career planning
• Providing work experience for students and teachers
• Creating business partnerships between schools and colleges and individuals or
groups of firms
The above list underlines the potential for the role of education/business partnering in en-
trepreneurship programmes. This article has argued that, if this is to be successful, great
care must be taken to find clear concepts and objectives so that the challenges of entre-
preneurship education are truly recognised and not confused with broader aspects of the
schools industry curriculum. The business community may need to be educated to de-
velop greater understanding of how the entrepreneurship curriculum goes beyond the
classroom to the culture of the education institution, its potential impact upon the organisa-
tion of classroom activity (perhaps redefining the classroom in this process) and the com-
petencies and development needs of teachers. The challenge is to build from existing
practice to achieve a more co-ordinated approach, taking the best from different pro-
grammes. Education and business collectively will need to reflect deeply upon issues of
progression.
Overall business will need to re-appraise its own competence in designing new ways of
preparing young people for the entrepreneurial challenge of the 21
st
century as set out
above. There will be a need for new kinds of partnerships between schools and business.
Business mentors will need different skills and will need training and development. The
Pentti Mankinen 2007 12/19
dialogue will need to proceed beyond ‘sound-bites’. Indeed without a substantial debate it
may be difficult to make much progress in this particular area of facing up to the educa-
tional challenge of the 21st century.
Pentti Mankinen 2007 13/19
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