Fostering early entrepreneurial competencies: an action research approach

This chapter contributes to the debate around whether acquiring entrepreneurial competencies is the main driver of the promotion and development of an entrepreneurial spirit and a sense of initiative. To do this, this chapter investigates the effects of early entrepreneurship education in non-cognitive entrepreneurial skills, such as creativity, innovation, risk taking, and other relevant soft skills. Specifically, this chapter examines the preliminary results of action research carried out on primary school students. The findings of this research reveal interesting insights and shed light on new teaching methods and perspectives that create a funny learning environment enriched by a cooperative climate and proactive behaviors in children

Successful and Unsuccessful routes for entrepreneurs: lessons from an Entrepreneurial Regional Project Program

There is a significant research on entrepreneurs, but none to very few on Financed Entrepreneurial Project Programs at the regional level. This chapter attempts to identify which of the several activities developed in the “Leiria Entrepreneurial Project Program”, helped to promote business acceleration and, to identify successful and unsuccessful routes for the stimulus of the entrepreneurship activity. Secondary and primary data were collected to answer the research questions. The results reveal that “Mentoring”, "Participation in Workshops" and “Conferences” activities are the most important to stimulate the spirit of entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurs' success route lies on the competencies of the business promoters, on multidisciplinary teams capable of creating a product/service, and on the maturity of the business idea planning in all its phases. The entrepreneur 's failure path lies on the inability to clearly identify the business idea, its development and its implementation. The findings provide an important theoretical contribution as it unveils an unexplored filed. They also help decision-makers to select the entrepreneurial actives that most help entrepreneurs to boost their business.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio