TEACHING

ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Chapter 9
Introduction (1)
◦ Wrong concept: “entrepreneurs are born and not made” and that entrepreneurship is not teachable
◦ Peter Drucker:
◦ Entrepreneurship is “not a personality trait,”
◦ Entrepreneurship is based on concept and theory and can be taught
◦ A special set of attitudes, skills, and knowledge is required to think and act entrepreneurially
◦ We have seen hundreds of undergraduates, graduates, and faculty members over the years learn the
entrepreneurial process and master the required entrepreneurial skills
◦ Students are often the most talented but doubting because there is no “right answer” in
entrepreneurship
◦ The key to success: academics and entrepreneurs accept the idea that the skills of entrepreneurship can
be learned, a new set of objections often arise
Introduction (2)
◦ Entrepreneurs thinks the practitioners, not the academic
◦ Faculty often objects to the inclusion of entrepreneurship within the sheltered space of
academia  belongs in business schools or somewhere that a trade is taught
◦ Academic training alone does not prepare someone to teach entrepreneurship, and
academics typically lack the essential real-world experience so useful in teaching
entrepreneurship effectively
◦ Academics happen to be entrepreneurs, but it is unrealistic to assume that academia will
routinely produce instructors fully qualified to teach the subject
◦ We need to pair them  but not easy
◦ involves a one-off, handmade approach that is extraordinarily resource intensive
Introduction (3)
◦ Research universities are not the place to teach the skills of “replicative entrepreneurship,”
◦ Textbooks and classical theories will not be as good teaching resources
◦ Information vital to replicative entrepreneurship  websites and other sources and can be
communicated effectively outside the university
◦ Teaching Innovative entrepreneurship  a different endeavor, however, and is precisely the
kind of activity great universitates should be engaged in.
Introduction (4)
◦ We need liberal education, skills: challenge conventional wisdom, synthesize information from
disparate sources, communication clearly, and keep an open mind when searching for answers
◦ But the university also imparts the content of its core disciplines
◦ Before creativity and synthesis can take place there must be mastery of an academic discipline
◦ Entrepreneurship education can integrate with traditional university disciplines that teach students
to think like chemists, anthropologists, or historians
◦ Entrepreneurship is a way of thinking that can be taught using a carefully tailored and relatively
expensive curriculum not easily expanded to large groups.
◦ We also believe entrepreneurship is a field of study that complements but does not replace
traditional university disciplines.
Build a Foundation in the Arts and
Sciences
◦ The place to starts!
◦ An opportunity to impact the core mission of the university because the humanities most closely reflect the
values and culture of a liberal education
◦ Teaches the largest number of students.

◦ If students and faculty gain value  the entire institution will follow
◦ Identifying the correct department became less important than finding a committed champion who was willing
to sponsor the program and shepherd it through the administrative process
◦ Beginning with undergraduates, because they are often unfettered by well-defined career goals and are, for the
most part, still considering multiple options while seeking their place in the world
◦ Arts and sciences students are less focused on their first job after graduation and more interested in exploration
◦ As a group, they are extraordinarily bright, motivated, and idealistic
Team Academics and Entrepreneurs (1)
◦ The secret sauce! Partnership
◦ think like entrepreneurs and have experience in applying the principles they teach

◦ How important an experienced academic is to the effort

◦ Academics:
◦ Intellectual content,
◦ Counters the perception that entrepreneurship is not a serious academic enterprise
◦ Better position to handle the administrative responsibilities of any new academic undertaking: including course approvals
and syllabus writing
◦ A personal interaction with a distinguished academic
◦ Challenging creating a curriculum that incorporates real-world applications,
◦ Reconciling the time and energy they must dedicate to teach entrepreneurship with their career goals: not many publication
opportunity,
◦ Less support from colleagues and administrators
Team Academics and Entrepreneurs (2)
◦ Entrepreneurs:
◦ Challenging  no matter how bright, always being critics as not serious to academic life
◦ Often fail to appreciate how hard it is to create a superior learning experience for students, and once engaged they are
surprised at the huge time commitment required for teaching
◦ Difficult to locate individuals with a track record of unquestioned professional success who have also remained connected to
academia

◦ On the academic side:

◦ The entrepreneurship faculty has been composed exclusively of senior, tenured professors with the freedom to undertake
new projects.
◦ To teach highly motivated, innovative undergraduates who want to make an impact in the world—and who aren’t accustomed
to taking no for an answer
Teach the Fundamentals (1)
◦ Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs  darlings of the popular media and interest in the field
◦ More textbook publications: entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship
◦ Definition of entrepreneurship begins with innovation (Peter Drucker), that innovations is not always
revolutionary but often involves adjustments to an existing process or system that can be anticipated by
understanding predictable demographic or cultural changes
◦ Next topic about Strategy of entrepreneurship
◦ “Ready, Fire, Aim!” approach is a wrong strategy, because they leap before they look
◦ Better strategy by Michael Porter: strategy is about being different,” and for innovation to be truly sustainable it must
embody a set of activities that result in a sustainable competitive advantage
◦ Set of critical questions:
◦ Is the opportunity or enterprise truly different? What are the activities
◦ required to sustain that difference? Most important, what activities
◦ must be eliminated or traded off to create lasting value?
Teach the Fundamentals (2)
◦ When we refer to marketing:
◦ Always a customer, “who is the customer” is at the outset
◦ “What business or enterprise are you truly in?”
◦ Students explore entrepreneurial opportunities.
◦ Teaching the numbers: how to model alternative financial scenarios, monitor the ongoing
finances of an operating entity (especially cash), and obtain financial backing.
◦ Knowledge of accounting and finance for 1 semester
◦ Introductory economics as the requirement
◦ Teach the fundamentals of an income statement: to illustrate the importance of cash: How
much will it take to start an enterprise, and where will it come from? How much will it take to
sustain the enterprise
◦ A six-hour module at the end of curriculum that focuses exclusively on entrepreneurial
finance
Teach the Fundamentals (3)
◦ Most of our students have come to the conclusion that no matter how good the idea and how clever the
strategy and marketing plan, without relentless execution, new enterprises are likely to fail.
◦ A section on ethics is a great opportunity to involve disciplines and departments
◦ the concept of social entrepreneurship: stress the idea that doing well and doing good are not mutually exclusive
◦ the concept of the “triple bottom line”: financial, environmental, and social impacts and positing techniques for
measuring each
◦ We would prefer an independent course on entrepreneurial ethics that employs an interdisciplinary approach, but our
curriculum is necessarily abridged
Employ a Variety of Techniques (1)
◦ “a contact sport” and cannot be taught exclusively in the classroom using a traditional lecture method
◦ Combination of (mixed methods):
◦ Highly interactive lecture in a large classroom setting (about 100 students or more) + case-based discussion (25 students
max)
◦ Outside speakers
◦ Specialized workshop courses
◦ Internships

◦ Lectures are used sparingly and crafted carefully, no more 1x per week, replacing with outside speakers about 5
times a semester
◦ Lectures  intellectual framework, engage students in a dialogue: contemporary examples of basic principles
◦ Lecture with video, and interactive lectures
◦ the case method as a teaching tool, class is conducted in Socratic method Q&A
Employ a Variety of Techniques (2)
◦ It is not easy task, requires special preparation for teachers and students
◦ A portion of the final grade on some measure of class participation
◦ Guest speakers are either the best or worst part of the curriculum
◦ Several techniques to maximize our chances of success with outside speakers
◦ it is important to spend time with the speaker in advance of the lecture or at least observe the person in a public situation
◦ when dealing with high-profile speakers for whom prescreening is not possible, we make sure a trusted colleague has heard
them speak.

◦ Encourage speakers to interact with a small group of students at lunch before class
◦ Workshops are the hands-on element of the curriculum
◦ Internships are expensive, time consuming, wrought with operational difficulty, and essential to our approach
Provide Practical Tools
◦ provide students with both a theoretical basis for thinking about entrepreneurship
and real-life experience in practicing it
◦ Skills development
◦ “One-pager”: to explain your idea or conclusion in no more than one page because a fast-
paced entrepreneurial world often allows the entrepreneur only one page to sell an idea
◦ requires a clear understanding of the core concept being discussed and to practice it
◦ Visual and oral Presentation Technique: to make a winning presentation to investors or
supporters the first time out
◦ require participation in outside competitions.
Limit the Size of the Undertaking
◦ High degree of student-faculty interaction with an effective ratio of no more than 1:25 in introductory courses
and approximately 1:12 in workshop sessions
◦ The internship requirement is also labor intensive.
◦ it involves not only finding internships and matching students with them but also troubleshooting all of the issues associated
with thrusting undergraduates into the world outside of academia.
◦ the 1:100 ratio for an internship program pushes the limit

◦ Teaching entrepreneurship in the manner we suggest is expensive

◦ Not all of these costs are typically reflected in the early days of such a program.
◦ Faculty and entrepreneurs often volunteer their time or provide it at a vastly reduced rate
◦ Even if cost were not a consideration, attracting the necessary talent to develop a large-scale entrepreneurship
program is a challenge
Reach beyond Arts and Sciences
◦ Creating an entrepreneurial university ultimately requires teaching entrepreneurship throughout the community

◦ We are experimenting with a graduate certificate that mirrors the undergraduate curriculum but with
concentrations in scientific entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship