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Entrepreneurship Education: Embedding Practitioner Experience
Lester Lloyd-Reason, Roger Mumby-Croft, Leigh Sear
The Context
Over the last ten years, there has been an increasing level of academic and policy interest in the role of higher education institutions as agents of economic and social development, through not only their research and teaching activities but also their engagement with individuals and businesses in the wider local and regional economy. For example, a recent report from the Council for Industry and Higher Education, the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship and NESTA in the United Kingdom notes that ‘HEIs have increasingly become more involved in regional economic and social development (through closer business, industry and third sector collaborations …) and activities such as the commercialisation of intellectual property’(NESTA, 2008, p.10).
Across a range of developed market economies, there have been a number of policy statements which have outlined ways in which the outreach or ‘third leg’ activities of higher educations institutions can be enhanced and supported. In the United Kingdom, for example, the Innovation White Paper (DIUS, 2008a), the Enterprise Strategy (BERR, 2008) and the Employer Engagement Reforms (DIUS, 2008b) all outline different scenarios for higher education institutions supporting the development of the capabilities and skills of individuals and businesses to survive and thrive. This policy narrative has manifested itself in programmes of support and funding streams including the Higher Education Reach Out into the Business and Community Fund, the Science and Enterprise Challenge Fund and the Higher Education Innovation Fund. As a result, HEIs have introduced a range of activities and initiatives to support students and staff in engaging with their community and vice-versa. Incubation spaces, technology transfer offices, business planning competitions and business development programmes are now common across the HEI landscape.
One key element of focus within such activities has been the development of enterprising students and graduates through enterprise education. Evidence from economies such as the United States highlights the potential contribution of enterprising students to competitiveness and productivity, particularly through facilitating organisational change and business start-up. Hannon et al. (2004) report on statistics from the United States that demonstrates that business start-ups by graduates accounts for between 6 and 8 per cent of national GDP. In addition, there is evidence of mis-match between the supply of graduates and the skills required by employers. Research undertaken by CIHE demonstrates a gap between perceived importance and levels of satisfaction in terms of commercial awareness and communication skills. Archer and Davison (2008, p.8) note that:
It appears that while many graduates hold satisfactory qualifications, they are lacking in the key ‘soft’ skills and qualities that employers increasingly need in a more customer focused world.
The current state of play within the UK Higher Education sector
The European Commission Green Paper on Entrepreneurship (2008) states that within universities, entrepreneurship training should not only be for MBA students but should also be available for students in other fields, However, with a few notable exceptions this has not happened within the U.K. Higher Education sector. Indeed even within Business schools the whole enterprise agenda has been undervalued resulting in an uneven offering across the sector where in the main enterprise as a subject remains on the periphery offered either as an option elective or at best bolted on to the pervading corporate model of education to create a degree programme that has enterprise/entrepreneurship the title, but with little change in the content and none in teaching methodology.
There has in business schools been an attempt to define the subject area, for example is teaching for enterprise or about entrepreneurship. These words are often seen as synonymous, however entrepreneurship is in essence about starting a new venture. Enterprise is the whole concept of how students need to think in a completely different way to face the challenge of work in the 21st century.
Not everyone will want to start a business, but all students need to be enterprising both for success in the work place and to add value to society. Therefore business schools need to change the way they both structure and deliver enterprise education. They have not thus far taught enterprise skills except where they are seen as relevant to understanding new venture creation, thus making it appear that this “special few” who are entrepreneurial have or need such a capability. Indeed most of such entrepreneurial programmes are formulaic in structure and traditionalist in methodology, which only serves to underpin the view that entrepreneurs are different to the rest of mainstream business. This has been and still is a very dangerous weakness in the understanding shown by Business Schools about the enterprise agenda and its importance to their collective futures.
There has then to be a major cultural change in the way UK Business Schools operate if they are to face these changes that are coming. Acceptance that there needs to be a move to a model of integrated learning with more student management of the process and a wide and more innovative use of technology is essential. Business schools in the UK have to move rapidly from an educational orthodoxy based on separate disciplines being taught in silos and managing the learning process by an arcane approach to teaching and learning that is reliant on didactic teaching approach and the production of ever more obtuse work books to an educational methodology that embraces the concept of enterprise and integrated business skills thus placing them at the centre of the curriculum and not on the periphery.
Further there has to be a much deeper understanding that such activities as creativity, problem solving, understanding innovation, risk management and culture change coupled with decision making and confidence building which in turn leads to self reliance, open minded respect for evidence and a willingness to take on responsibility, are the absolute core issues of the enterprise concept.
In order to achieve this change Business schools need to interact more with the entrepreneurial world by bringing successful enterprising people into the development and delivery process. This is something again which U K Business schools have not embraced due to a culture of academic insulation that if not changed will render them increasingly non competitive.
Professor Lester Lloyd-Reason, Director, Centre for International Business, Anglia Ruskin University, Lester.Lloyd-Reason@anglia.ac.uk
Professor Roger Mumby-Croft, University of Warwick Business School, roger.mumby-croft@wbs.ac.uk
Leigh Sear, Joint Managing Director, Wood Holmes Group, leighs@woodholmes.co.uk