Why more entrepreneurship education is not necessarily better?

A couple of months back I had the pleasure of attending a provocative seminar by Prof Ulla Hytti from Turku School of Economics. She is also a visiting professor at the Division of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Nord University Business School.

The topic of her talk is the title of this blog post! Isn’t that provocative enough?

Entrepreneurship is now being taught in more Universities, colleges and schools than ever before. Entrepreneurship education has clearly transcended the boundaries of the business school. Some universities have now labelled themselves as ‘entrepreneurial universities’. Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education are truly becoming ubiquitous. This is both encouraging and worrying!

Prof Hytti cautioned us that it was probably the right time to pause and reflect – on the  question – ‘Why more entrepreneurship education is not necessarily better?’. Having been an entrepreneurship educator for over a decade, I could not agree more to her reasons for why we should pause and reflect:

• entrepreneurship is positioned as a panacea to all social and economic challenges
• every course wants to be ‘entrepreneurial’ in some way
• most entrepreneurship courses look similar (content and pedagogy)
• everyone wants to be ‘entrepreneurial’ (from Universities to corporations)
• everyone wants to be an entrepreneurship educator

Without complaining, Prof Hytti gave us enough reasons as to why it was good to reflect when things are apparently good for the field. She also highlighted the benefits of such critical reflections. The discussions post her presentation went on for a long time and ranged from issues of how much contextualization is right for entrepreneurship courses, how to balance reflection and action in entrepreneurship education and approaches required for bringing reflection in entrepreneurship education, especially after action-oriented modules.

I have often heard people say, there is little to research in entrepreneurship education. I used to doubt it, but after yesterday’s reflection, I completely disagree. There are a number of things about entrepreneurship education that we don’t understand well enough. Following an ‘ideal’ curriculum and an ‘ideal’ pedagogy is only aggravating the challenges looming under the surface of entrepreneurship education.

I left the seminar wondering if it was time to start some new research projects on entrepreneurship education. Do you have questions on entrepreneurship education that have perplexed you?  Here is my first one: How can we teach entrepreneurial failure? How can we enable students experience and learn from failure?

Do share your top questions in the comments section below. We can probably create a list of unanswered research questions in entrepreneurship education.

The Future of Conducting and Publishing Research in Entrepreneurship, Innovation Management and Strategy

Bologna Workshop 2019 Group Photo, Courtesy: Bologna Business School

I am happy that a couple of my papers were accepted for the paper development workshop (PDW) at this futuristic event. It was also special as the workshop was hosted at The University of Bologna which is the Western World’s oldest University, running continuously since 1088, just a wee bit shy of its 1000th birthday! (Yes, you saw it right, thousandth b’day)

My working group, Courtesy: Einar Rasmussen

The workshop assembled a small group of established and early-career scholars! The stellar line-up of senior scholars represented the editorial boards of some of the best journals in management (e.g. AMJ, Org Science, SMJ, ETP, SEJ) and entrepreneurship (at least 10 FT50 journals). It was such an amazing experience walking and talking with the stars in management and entrepreneurship research. It was an equally amazing opportunity to make friends with peers across several topics within business and management.

The inspiring setting, the historic ‘Villa Guastavillani’ – a wonderful location on a hill in Bologna which also hosts the Bologna Business School, just raised our intellectual aspirations. I received high quality feedback (and so did every early-career scholar) on my papers from Johan Wiklund (Editor-in-Chief, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice), Frederic Delmar (Associate Editor, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal) and Alfredo De Massis (Associate Editor, Family Business Review). I am confident that this will help me prepare my paper for potential submission to a top ranked journal in management or entrepreneurship. The senior scholars were candid yet friendly. The constructive and developmental nature of the feedback received by me and my peers will help us improve as scholars apart from taking our specific papers forward.

Ask the editors session, Courtesy: Einar Rasmussen

Where it all started, Courtesy: Einar Rasmussen

 

In addition to the paper feedback sessions, the senior scholars also engaged in debates around issues concerning people within academia – open access publishing and where to publish. The lively sessions brought out many lighter moments while exposing the complexity of knowledge creation. We had adequate time and access to some of the best scholars in the world to answer our naive questions.

I thank the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Nord University Business School, Society for the Advancement of Management Studies (SAMS) and University of Bologna for hosting such a wonderful workshop. This enabled about twenty early-career scholars like myself to move our research forward. I am sure it provided adequate inspiration and guidance for us to plan and pursue our academic careers.

All of us left the workshop feeling deeply satisfied and sufficiently inspired for raising our scholarly aspirations.

My 2nd Babson Conference

It was great being there at the 37th Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference (BCERC) hosted at the Michael F Price School of Business, University of Oklahoma, Norman. This was my second Babson (as people there refer to it). While the last time I was a doctoral consortium participant (competitively selected), this time I presented my first paper based on the thesis work.

I enjoyed my first paper presentation (Corporate Accelerators: A grounded study of its motives, manifestations and measures) at this prestigious conference. It was also my first paper co-authored with my mentor. I met a few of my fellow doctoral consortium participants – Mona, Jerone, Moyra, Beldina, Ida, Wei (hope I’m not missing anyone) and it was heartening to see their achievements and progress. You guys inspire!

I met many stars (Aldrich, Busenitz, Lumpkin, Landstorm, Patzelt, and others) in entrepreneurship research including Prof Robert Baron who won the Lifetime Achievement Award this year. His book ‘Enhancing Entrepreneurial Excellence’ was one of the first academic texts I read as a doctoral student. It was exciting to see his energy and enthusiasm.

I made new friends from across the world. All of them are scholars (some budding) with a keen interest in the phenomenon of entrepreneurship. We spent a lot of time laughing and chatting over trivia between sessions and during the social events.

The BCERC is a cool conference where you get to hear emerging ideas which will probably appear in journals a year or two down the line. It is also highly developmental with people giving each other feedback for improvement. Senior scholars are willing to give time and listen to our ideas and questions without any criticism.

As I told Georgia who is the most important person behind the conference – ‘I’m now a BCERC fan’ and hope to keep coming back to the conference every year (of course to present my research papers) and return ‘recharged and inspired’.

Thanks to the organising team of BCERC and Price School, Oklahoma for making this conference yet another memorable experience.

Reporting Vs Research

I had an interesting chat with an eager, passionate, enthusiastic and smart student. She wanted to write about entrepreneurship. We spoke about how she could approach learning the subject and eventually contributing to it. During the conversation I found that we kept coming back to this rather important point – reporting versus research.

Reporting is what reporters must do. They are to observe and report (state facts) without interpretation. They normally do not involve trying to identify ‘causality’. On the other hand research is what researchers do. They use the facts and attempt to draw causality. They try to answer questions about why, how, and what behind phenomena.

Reporting must record phenomena, Research must attempt to decipher the meaning and causality behind it.

It is important to know that both roles are important. It is because we do not have high quality reporting that we do not have high quality datasets to work with. Hence both roles are critical. So why is this important?

As a student of any subject it is important to locate oneself in a role that is most suitable to one’s interests as well as one’s capabilities. It is only by situating oneself in the cusp of interest and capability that one can contribute to the most. One can straddle between the two, but moving too often makes one less focussed on either. Hence it makes sense to stay rooted in one and occasionally spend time in the other.

I am a researcher. I have decided to be one. I try to help practitioners make sense of phenomena and thereby make better decisions. What do you want to do? Think and make a wise decision!

I told this budding writer the same thing. The beauty is – she said she would take the inputs, think on it and come back with her decision. This makes the life of a teacher worthwhile.

Happy Thinking!

My article on Management INK

Most academics agree that their research reaches less people than it deserves. One of the reasons is that academic articles are not shared widely on social media. SAGE has created an interesting initiative called ‘Management INK’. It is a blog that shares interesting academic articles from the vast range of SAGE Journals. The editorial staff present a short review, and indicate its potential. I have been following this blog and enjoyed identifying useful articles.

Happy to share that ‘Management INK’ has reviewed and shared my article titled ‘Indian Entrepreneurship through a historical lens: A dialogue with Dwijendra Tripathi’. This article appeared in The Journal of Entrepreneurship Volume 25 Issue 1 (March 2016).

Link: https://managementink.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/indian-entrepreneurship-and-its-varied-manifestations-a-historical-perspective/

The article offers number of areas for further research in Entrepreneurship. Doctoral Students, Academic Researchers, Teachers and Policy Makers will find useful insights in this article.

DOWNLOAD PAPER FOR FREE! ‘Management INK’ and SAGE also allow a two week free access to the article on their blog. So, go ahead, download, read and use this article in your future research.

Happy Reading!

10 facts about entrepreneurs that might surprise you

Anything and everything about entrepreneurs always surprise us and that’s what makes studying entrepreneurship so exciting. Do you agree?

But here is a short set of slides based on a report from the Kauffman Foundation that finds some glaring anomalies to widely held beliefs: http://www.inc.com/ss/jeff-haden/10-facts-about-entrepreneurs-that-may-surprise-you

While a few are in line with what we may have seen on the field, some are truly fresh. This is based on a survey of over 500 entrepreneurs. While this may be a scientific finding, it definitely lends a helping hand to understand entrepreneurs better.

Some contrarian facts:

• Age does not matter
• Education matters
• Relationship (especially marriage) helps
• Building wealth is as important (if not more) as passion
• Working before you start helps

A lot more research is needed in understanding entrepreneurship at large and entrepreneurs in specific. Especially in a country like India where entrepreneurship is touted as an important tool for socio-economic development, more research is essential. This can fuel policy formulation and ecosystem development.

Think about it!