How to Educate Entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurship education has two purposes: To improve students’ entrepreneurial skills and to provide impetus to those suited to entrepreneurship while discouraging the rest. While entrepreneurship education helps students to make a vocational decision its effects may conflict for those not suited to entrepreneurship. This study shows that vocational and the skill formation effects of entrepreneurship education can be identified empirically by drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior. This is embedded in a structural equation model which we estimate and test using a robust 2SLS estimator. We find that the attitudinal factors posited by the Theory of Planned Behavior are positively correlated with students’ entrepreneurial intentions. While conflicting effects of vocational and skill directed course content are observed in some individuals, overall these types of content are complements. This finding contradicts previous results in the literature. We reconcile the conflicting findings and discuss implications for the design of entrepreneurship courses

Avaliação do Ensino de Empreendedorismo entre Estudantes Universitários por meio do Perfil Empreendedor

Entrepreneurship is a socioeconomic phenomenon that has been valued for its influence on the growth and development of regional and national economies. The main promoter of this phenomenon are entrepreneurs, subjects endowed with multiple features that make up their profiles. They are dynamic and results oriented, benefitting from the fruits of their own personal efforts. Entrepreneurial education is highlighted as one of the most efficient ways to promote an entrepreneurial culture and train new entrepreneurs. However, some difficulty has been observed in assessing the effectiveness of teaching and learning this subject. The objective of this study was to analyze, by means of multivariate techniques, an instrument whose function is to measure the learning of Entrepreneurship, verifying the change in entrepreneur profiles of 407 college students participating or not in an entrepreneurial training process. The results showed that students who participated in Entrepreneurship educational training activities showed significant changes in their entrepreneurial profiles. The main contributions showed growth in the Self-realization, Planner, Innovative and Risks Assumed dimensions

Omega-3 Fatty Acids from Fish Oil Lower Anxiety, Improve Cognitive Functions and Reduce Spontaneous Locomotor Activity in a Non-Human Primate

Omega-3 (ω3) polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) are major components of brain cells membranes. ω3 PUFA-deficient rodents exhibit severe cognitive impairments (learning, memory) that have been linked to alteration of brain glucose utilization or to changes in neurotransmission processes. ω3 PUFA supplementation has been shown to lower anxiety and to improve several cognitive parameters in rodents, while very few data are available in primates. In humans, little is known about the association between anxiety and ω3 fatty acids supplementation and data are divergent about their impact on cognitive functions. Therefore, the development of nutritional studies in non-human primates is needed to disclose whether a long-term supplementation with long-chain ω3 PUFA has an impact on behavioural and cognitive parameters, differently or not from rodents. We address the hypothesis that ω3 PUFA supplementation could lower anxiety and improve cognitive performances of the Grey Mouse Lemur (Microcebus murinus), a nocturnal Malagasy prosimian primate. Adult male mouse lemurs were fed for 5 months on a control diet or on a diet supplemented with long-chain ω3 PUFA (n = 6 per group). Behavioural, cognitive and motor performances were measured using an open field test to evaluate anxiety, a circular platform test to evaluate reference spatial memory, a spontaneous locomotor activity monitoring and a sensory-motor test. ω3-supplemented animals exhibited lower anxiety level compared to control animals, what was accompanied by better performances in a reference spatial memory task (80% of successful trials vs 35% in controls, p<0.05), while the spontaneous locomotor activity was reduced by 31% in ω3-supplemented animals (p<0.001), a parameter that can be linked with lowered anxiety. The long-term dietary ω3 PUFA supplementation positively impacts on anxiety and cognitive performances in the adult mouse lemur. The supplementation of human food with ω3 fatty acids may represent a valuable dietary strategy to improve behavioural and cognitive functions

Evolving missions and university entrepreneurship:Academic spin-offs and graduate start-ups in the entrepreneurial society

A recent call has urged to broaden the conceptualization of university entrepreneurship in order to appreciate the heterogeneity of contexts and actors involved in the process of entrepreneurial creation. A gap still persists in the understanding of the variety of ventures generated by different academic stakeholders, and the relationships between these entrepreneurial developments and university missions, namely, teaching and research. This paper addresses this particular gap by looking at how university teaching and research activities influence universities’ entrepreneurial ventures such as academic spin-offs and graduate start-ups. Empirically, we analyse the English higher education sector, drawing on institutional data at the university level. First, we explore the ways in which teaching and research activities are configured, and secondly, we examine how such configurations relate to academic spin-offs and graduate start-ups across different universities over time. Our findings suggest, first, that the evolution of USOs and graduate start-ups exhibit two different pathways over time; and second, that teaching and research both affect entrepreneurial ventures but their effect is different.JRC.B.4-Human Capital and Employmen

Sustainable wine tourism development through the lens of dynamic capabilities and entrepreneurial action: an exploratory four-region perspective

This study contributes to the sustainable wine tourism literature in various ways. First, using a multi-country approach, the study empirically explores the perceived benefits gained from wine tourism, and the ways in which it could be developed sustainably. These dimensions are examined through the lens of the dynamic capabilities approach and entrepreneurial action. Subsequently, a theoretical framework is proposed to enhance understanding of the development of sustainable wine tourism. Unstructured, in-depth, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 56 winery owners and managers. The two theoretical frameworks help understand the various forms in which sensing and seizing can be materialised in opportunities for wine tourism development, and reconfiguring, or moving forward, to identify ways to achieve its sustainability. Stemming from the findings and the adoption of the theoretical contributions, a strategic toolkit is proposed, which provides guidance to various stakeholders in their efforts to develop a sustainable wine tourism industry. © 2020, © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

Corporate Entrepreneurship:From Structures to Mindset

Corporate entrepreneurship dispersed throughout an organization and leveraging the entrepreneurial potential of all its employees bears significant benefits for those organizations that embrace it. However, it appears more difficult to instill and requires strong investment in the development of human capital and entrepreneurial mindset among the employees and across the organization. In this chapter, we discuss the essence of corporate entrepreneurship mindset and show that across an organization, there might be different entrepreneurial mindsets that correspond to different people, opportunities, and contexts. Although different, they all lead to enactment of entrepreneurial projects. This chapter, thus, contributes to the discussion regarding the nature of corporate entrepreneurial mindsets, and their development and stimulation within an organization, from both academic and practical view

The graduation performance of technology business incubators in China's three tier cities: the role of incubator funding, technical support, and entrepreneurial mentoring

This study examines the effects of technology business incubator (TBI)’s funding, technical support and entrepreneurial mentoring on the graduation performance of new technology-based firms in China’s three tier cities. Using new dataset on all TBIs and incubated new technology-based firms from government surveys conducted over five consecutive years from 2009 to 2013 combined with archival and hand-collected data, we find the effects of incubator services on the early growth of new technology-based firms vary according to the local context. Technical support facilities and entrepreneurial mentoring from TBIs are found to have significantly and positively influenced the early development of the firms in the four most affluent tier 1 cities, whilst these effects become less pronounced for the tier 2 and tier 3 cities. These two services are also found to influence graduation performance in the government and university types of TBI respectively. Results support the notion that the effectiveness of an incubators services is shaped by the level of a city’s socio-economic development and that the city location of a TBI does impact the graduation performance of its incubatees

Resistance and change in a depleted community: personal, pragmatic and paradoxical.

In this chapter, the authors explore entrepreneurial change in Stanton, a rural small town in New Zealand. This once-prosperous place has suffered economically and socially as its past core industries have vanished, and it can now be considered as a depleted community. Yet in recent years, the town has seen a rejuvenation, in part due to the endeavours of Sue, a high-profile entrepreneur from outside the town who has set up several businesses in the town and indeed in other small towns in the region. Theoretically, the authors take an entrepreneurial identity perspective in examining how Sue’s arrival has changed the town; the authors examine how her entrepreneurship was perceived as legitimate. The authors use a qualitative methodology based on semi-structured interviews. The authors contribute in demonstrating how an ascribed entrepreneurial identity can not only enable but also hinder change in this community, generating confidence and emotional contagion around entrepreneurship, and also uncertainty and resentment. In doing so, the authors challenge the universality of entrepreneurship benefits

How university’s activities support the development of students’ entrepreneurial abilities: case of Slovenia and Croatia

The paper reports how the offered university activities support the development of students’ entrepreneurship abilities. Data were collected from 306 students from Slovenian and 609 students from Croatian universities. The study reduces the gap between theoretical researches about the academic entrepreneurship education and individual empirical studies about the student’s estimation of the offered academic activities for development of their entrepreneurial abilities. The empirical research revealed differences in Slovenian and Croatian students’ perception about (a) needed academic activities and (b) significance of the offered university activities, for the development of their entrepreneurial abilities. Additionally, the results reveal that the impact of students’ gender and study level on their perception about the importance of the offered academic activities is not significant for most of the considered activities. The main practical implication is focused on further improvement of universities’ entrepreneurship education programs through selection and utilization of activities which can fill in the recognized gaps between the students’ needed and the offered academic activities for the development of students’ entrepreneurial abilities