Expanding university entrepreneurial ecosystems to under-represented communities

Purpose – Entrepreneurship education has moved from an elitist view focussing on a start-up and picking-the-winners philosophy towards a broader enterprising behaviour approach; recognising entrepreneurship as an activity of relevance for everybody. The purpose of this paper is to extend this development and identify how university entrepreneurial ecosystems can be expanded to support communities that are under-represented in entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach – Based on an integrative literature review (Torraco, 2005), this paper draws together and synthesises literature from the field of entrepreneurship, higher education studies and under-represented communities in an integrated fashion, leading to the development of a new conceptual model. Findings – This paper challenges the traditional role of universities in supporting entrepreneurship as focussing mainly on economic growth and new venture creation, and identifies how universities are also positioned to provide greater civic support to entrepreneurial learning amongst under-represented communities. Through a critical analysis of the literature, the conceptual model proposed identifies six key considerations in the expansion of university entrepreneurial ecosystems for under-represented communities. Practical implications – There are currently 96.6m people at risk of poverty and social exclusion in the EU (OECD, 2017) and an estimated 43.1m Americans (US Census Bureau, 2017). This paper explores how university entrepreneurial ecosystems can be expanded to support minority and disadvantaged communities who are under-represented in terms of entrepreneurial activity. Originality/value – Given that there is little research regarding how universities might activate inclusive entrepreneurship initiatives amongst under-represented communities, this paper expands existing knowledge as it identifies the key considerations encompassing university-led community collaborative enterprise support

Analysing entrepreneurship education: a bibliometric survey pattern

Entrepreneurship education is an evolving field that confronts obstacles due to fragmentation issues and eclectic approaches that have to be resolved utilising robust educational theories and tools able to intrude effectively the entrepreneurial research discourse. Entrepreneurial learning is also the outcome of education and an unequivocal component of theorising about entrepreneurship. Based on explanatory bibliometric techniques, the present study examines, for the first time, how these terms have emerged in the extant entrepreneurship literature since eighties. A set of 7726 abstracts, retrieved from the SCOPUS database, is analysed through (key)word frequencies, co-occurrence networks and citations. Quantitative findings verify the customary picture for entrepreneurship education that exhibits low academic citation and loose connections with learning theories. The present data also reveal that the connection of entrepreneurship with lifelong learning settings, vocational training and career counselling is scarce in literature. Other "gaps" in research pertain to the comprehensive examination of experiential learning, advanced learning processes and education for innovation. The quantitatively identified shortage of the previous research topics is crucial for the future development of the field of entrepreneurship. Implications concern educational researchers in the field of entrepreneurship, educational agencies or policies as well as academic publishers