A New Course on Sustainable Entrepreneurship (original) (raw)
Related papers
2016
Starting with the results of a needs analysis, we initiated a multi-stakeholder process with five workshops in three European countries to develop modules for a joint European master program on Sustainability-driven Entrepreneurship. This process was supported by literature reviews concerning relevant content fields and adequate teaching and learning approaches. The master program will be explicitly competence-, not only knowledge-oriented. Therefore, we were looking for teaching and learning methods that foster sustainability and entrepreneurial competencies like anticipatory thinking, creativity, opportunity-detection, strategic action competence and interpersonal, communication skills. As entrepreneurs, students will address complex real-world sustainability problems within a business setting. The results are now published in this report that outlines the master program concerning content, methods and a possible course structure.
Ensuring Environmental Sustainability Through Sustainable Entrepreneurship
Sustainable Development
Sustainability has become an important issue worldwide because of great concerns about the unintended social, environmental, and economic effects of increasing population and economic growth, as well as consumption of natural resources. One recent concept arising from sustainability issue is sustainable entrepreneurship which integrates both the social and environmental aspects, and linking them with entrepreneurial activities. This chapter therefore suggests that efforts of developing countries at promoting entrepreneurship should go beyond engaging in business enterprises but include encouraging the use of entrepreneurial values and approaches to solve sustainability problems. Hence, this chapter is an effort at developing a framework that can be used to influence sustainable entrepreneurship behaviour of the students in developing countries.
Sustainability: what the entrepreneurship educators think
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider the understanding and presence of sustainability within entrepreneurship education. The extant literature on sustainability within the entrepreneurship discipline remains extremely limited. Previously, sustainability within an entrepreneurship context has related to economic viability as opposed to sustainability in its broadest sense. This study explores, through a survey of entrepreneurship educators, three key research questions, namely, how entrepreneurship educators believe that entrepreneurs can contribute to solving sustainability problems. Second, to what extent education about sustainability is integrated within existing entrepreneurship curricula. Finally, what considerations are being made to include sustainability within future programmes. Design/methodology/approach – This study represented part of a larger university project exploring the associations between the sustainability and entrepreneurship disciplines. This part of the study involved a web-based survey from entrepreneurship academics drawn from Australia, New Zealand, UK, and the USA which provided 54 completed questionnaires. Findings – The study uncovered much good practice led by “champions” within the entrepreneurship discipline. However, embedded sustainability practice was typically limited and it was more typically regarded as an “add-on” to traditional entrepreneurial teaching. Practical implications – The study proposes three ways in which sustainability might be more meaningfully integrated into entrepreneurship programmes. First, the QAA (2012) guidelines for enterprise and entrepreneurship need to be reconsidered to encapsulate the sustainability agenda. Second, for entrepreneurship educators to reconsider their pedagogical approaches to encapsulate systems thinking as more holistic educational perspective. Finally, the authors call for entrepreneurship educators to revise their programmes to embed the core facets of social, environmental, economic, and more recently ethical sustainability. Originality/value – The study offers a novel insight into entrepreneurship educators attitudes to sustainability and their approach to it within their curricula. This study provides an initial benchmark regarding the levels of sustainability provision within entrepreneurship curricula which will be of interest to the entrepreneurship academic community, the sustainability community, and policy makers.
Education in Social Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Development
2020
This new series fosters information exchange and discussion on higher education for sustainability and related aspects, namely, academic staff and student initiatives, campus design for sustainability, curriculum development for sustainability, global green standards: ISO 14000, green computing, green engineering education, index of sustainability, recycling and energy efficiency, strategic sustainable d evelopment, sustainability policies, sustainability reports, etc. The series will also provide information on principles, strategies, models, techniques, methodologies, and applications of higher education for sustainability. It aims to communicate the latest developments and thinking as well as the latest research activity relating to higher education, namely, engineering education.
Entrepreneurs keep our economy and society vibrant by implementing new ideas, which is why our society needs people with entrepreneurship competences. The development of our entrepreneurship competences does not begin with the start of our professional lives, but is initiated in earlier phases of our socialisation. Entrepreneurship education can trigger and support this process. A common goal of entrepreneurship education is to strengthen entrepreneurs with value orientation for a sustainable society. All entrepreneurs of the future are in school today, the nature of their value-oriented education and their willingness to participate is shaped by todayís learning. This article provides information about entrepreneurship education, with a focus on Entrepreneurial Challenge-Based Learning for a sustainable future. Entrepreneurial Challenge-Based Learning touches on the basic personal and social issues of responsibility and autonomy and is intended to foster a culture of solidarity in our society.
Entrepreneurial Education in the Context of the Imperative Development of Sustainable Business
European Journal of Sustainable Development, 2020
Entrepreneurial education is one of the fastest growing areas in the world today, with a growing interest in academia, which allows the possibility of linking current labor market needs to academic theory. The purpose of this article is to make a positive contribution to the formation of future entrepreneurship programs, by analyzing existing curricula to identify potential educational gaps, as well as to identify the skills needed by students in the context of sustainable business development. This will allow entrepreneurial trainers to exchange ideas that facilitate collective learning and help inform researchers about the future directions of education. This article will focus on the analysis of existing entrepreneurship education at the international level, as well as on the development of suggestions on how entrepreneurship education can progress further, as a way of shaping the future development of the economy. Keywords: entrepreneurial education, sustainable business, sustai...
Transformational Sustainability Entrepreneurship: Encouraging Students to Become Real Change Agents
Transforming Entrepreneurship Education, 2022
Entrepreneurial Education needs to be transformed. Our seminar called Transformational Sustainability Entrepreneurship aims at meeting this need by guiding students to become change agents for tackling the grand societal challenges of our time. In this chapter, we explain the five fundamental aspects in which this seminar is designed for students’ transformational learning experience. The seminar itself is divided into three phases: Understanding, Creative Thinking, and Pitching with an overarching reflection process. We introduce the concept, which we have been using for four years at two different universities, for others to apply and use in their own teaching activities.
An objective of the European Unionís Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan is to address high levels of youth unemployment in Europe by promoting entrepreneurship. Implementing entrepreneurship education in schools, colleges and universities is one of three strategic interventions proposed by the Action Plan. Sustainable entrepreneurship is a recognised branch of the wider field of entrepreneurship and the literature on sustainable entrepreneurship sees it as a means of addressing some of the sustainability challenges of the 21 st century. This article compares the pedagogical approaches and the competences of ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) with those of entrepreneurship education to identify how ESD might influence entrepreneurship education in order to develop entrepreneurs that contribute to a sustainable future. This comparison is placed in the context of the broader debate on the need to transform the dominant neo-liberal economic systems as part of the precondition fo...