First-year business students’ entrepreneurial attitudes

[EN] Entrepreneurial competences  consist of attitudes, knowledge and skills. Several higher education institutions support and promote students' learning of entrepreneurial competences during their studies. In order to verify the development of these competences they should be first examined at the early phase of the studies. Therefore, in the autumn 2017 when a new curriculum was launched in the  business department of a Finnish university of applied sciences, a follow-up study with three sub-studies was planned to annually survey students' attitudes towards entrepreneurship, generic competences and subject-specific competences of entrepreneurship.This paper presents the results of the first sub-study which examined the students' attitudes in the beginning of their studies. According to the findings, their attitudes towards entrepreneurship  are quite positive. Although the aim is not to generalize the results of the study beyond this student group, the findings provide a solid starting point for the implementation of the curriculum in this higher education institution and thus, for the development of students' even more positive attitudes towards entrepreneurship during their studies. http://ocs.editorial.upv.es/index.php/HEAD/HEAD18Kakkonen, M. (2018). First-year business students’ entrepreneurial attitudes. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 257-265. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD18.2018.7973OCS25726

Development of business students’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship between 2017–2018

[EN] This article presents the results of the development of the students’ entrepreneurial attitudes between the first and third semester. According to the findings, the attitudes towards entrepreneurship were quite positive in the beginning of the studies, and it seems that they remained at the same level during one year. Based on the findings, as a practical implication there is a need for monitoring pedagogical approaches and methods of the programme to make sure that they support enough the development of entrepreneurial attitudes. The entire development of entrepreneurial competences will be revealed by the next annual studiesKakkonen, M. (2019). Development of business students’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship between 2017–2018. En HEAD'19. 5th International Conference on Higher Education Advances. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 19-27. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD19.2019.9213OCS192

Innovations in education

The world is changing at tremendous speed, generating pressure to rather conservative and tradition bound education principles and methods. Education often struggles to catch up with the pace of changes in the global, economy and technology driven world which is accompanied by the diversification of stakeholders’´ needs the education system should address. Today, innovativeness, connectivity and individuality are much more needed and required than just 10–20 years ago and one size fits all approaches doesn‘t work anymore. After all, as is often appealed nowadays, while students represent 25% or more of our population, they are 100% of our future. This book, as a result of the Innovation in education seminar, held on 17th and 18th of October 2017 at South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences in Mikkeli, Finland, presents good practices and research results from three areas related to innovations in education: new –innovative education programs, innovative approaches to teaching and role of marketing in educational setting

Development and facilitation of innovative pedagogy in the Nordic–Russian context : Project report

The project of Development and Facilitation of Innovative Pedagogy in the Nordic–Russian Context was implemented in 2016. The main objective of the project was to develop and facilitate innovative pedagogy in the entrepreneurship and business study curriculum in higher education in the Nordic– ussian context by deepening the network cooperation of the four partner HEIs. The primary target group of the project was teachers of the partner universities. Demand for the proposed project activities was identified during the finished project on innovative entrepreneurship (NCMRU/10088) with the same composition of partner organisations. This publication consists of three parts: Part A describes the implementation of the project. The first article presents the whole project and the three following articles introduce the teaching training seminars conducted during the seminar. Part B introduces the educational systems of the partner countries and the current practices of the partners related to the teaching methods and collaboration with enterprises. Finally, Part C of the publication includes an introduction to innovation pedagogy and presents the innovative teaching methods piloted during the project. The innovative teaching methods described in the publication are either the current state of continuous development by the partner universities or being applied in the cross-cultural study environment in Finland, Denmark and Russia. The objective of this publication is not only to report the project outcomes, but to disseminate them and also to encourage teachers to use them open-mindedly. This publication provides a broad outlook on the international cooperation in the field of innovative education, contributing thus to the modernisation of the educational practices in Finland, Denmark and Russia. In conclusion, the modernisation of the European society in the XXI century is connected primarily with the continuous development of the European educational system. Concrete suggestions for such improvement with the use of innovative teaching methods in the cross-cultural educational environment are given in the publication and represent the practical contribution of the project to the European education

Intuition and entrepreneurs : a phenomenological study of managerial intuition of Finnish family entrepreneurs

Business environments have changed rapidly especially during the last decades. Nowadays there are many unpredictable and uncertain factors in managing businesses. In addition, rational thinking and decision-making based on facts and figures have traditionally been emphasised in business. However, due to the changing environments one can not always know facts well enough in order to be sure about the choices. Sometimes decisions have to be made very quickly, or there is no explicit knowledge regarding a problem, or there is neither enough time nor enough information. Therefore, managers, and entrepreneurs as managers, need to rely more often on their intuition in making decisions and solving problems.This study aimed at enhancing the understanding of the phenomenon of intuition in managerial work of family entrepreneurs. The research questions were formulated as follows: What is the essence of intuition experiences of family entrepreneurs in managerial work? How do managerial intuition experiences of family entrepreneurs appear?This qualitative study involved 19 Finnish family entrepreneurs. The empirical data collection method comprised phenomenological, in-depth interviews. The data analysis method adopted in the study was a phenomenological.Based on the findings, the essence of the managerial intuition involved three aspects called Social intuition, Opportunity intuition, and Action intuition. It seemed that some individuals had more intuition experiences than others. Further, it seemed that intuition appeared in different ways to different individuals and they made use of their intuitions in different ways in business. Female entrepreneurs did not have more intuition experiences, but they had more of one type of intuition, Social intuition, than males.Marja-Liisa Kakkonen tutki väitöskirjassaan, miten perheyrittäjät hyödyntävät intuitiota tehdessään päätöksiä johtamistyössä. Intuitio ilmenee eri yksilöillä eri tavoin, ja myös sen hyödyntämisessä on eroja. Intuitio ohjaa yleensä toimimaan oikein, mutta sen seuraaminen saattaa joskus johtaa myös epäonnistuneeseen lopputulokseen. - Intuitio koetaan pääsääntöisesti myönteisenä asiana. Sen hyödyntäminen on johtamistyöhön liittyvä taito, joka joillakin perheyrittäjillä on parempi kuin toisilla. Intuitiosta on kuitenkin vaikea puhua, ja sen käyttö ei näytä olevan yhtä hyväksyttävää johtamisessa kuin faktatietojen hyödyntäminen, Kakkonen huomauttaa.Intuitio ilmenee kolmella tavalla: sosiaalisena, liiketoimintamahdollisuuksiin ja toimintaan liittyvänä intuitiona. Naisilla ei ollut määrällisesti enempää intuitiokokemuksia kuin miehillä, mutta heillä korostui sosiaalisen intuition rooli. Miesten intuitio ilmenee tasaisemmin kaikilla kolmella tavalla. Miespuolisten perheyrittäjien intuition käyttöön liittyy myös taloudellisia riskejä, sillä se on vahvemmin yhteydessä liiketoiminnan päätöksentekotilanteisiin. Miesten sosiaalinen intuitio ilmenee puolestaan toisen ihmisen ominaisuuksien ymmärtämisenä esimerkiksi rekrytointitilanteessa.Perheyrittäjyyskontekstilla on vaikutusta intuition käyttöön. Perheyrittäjyys voi joko edistää intuition hyödyntämistä tai vähentää sen käyttöä johtamistehtävissä

Innovative entrepreneurship education in the Nordic-Russian context : Project report

This publication introduces a Nordic-Russia (NORU) project which is entitled Innovative Entrepreneurship in Nordic- Russian context (Project number NCM-RU/10088). The main goal of the project was to strengthen the network of four higher educational institutions in Russia, Finland and Denmark. The specific objectives of the project were as follows: to promote students’ skills to reflect on innovations, to enhance students’ entrepreneurial mindset, to train students’ understanding of value creation for customers/markets, and to increase entrepreneurial teaching competences of teachers. The main goal was aimed to be achieved by arranging multi- cultural learning events as the main activities of the project for teachers and students. The specific objectives were aimed to be achieved by training them through innovation pedagogy and creating entrepreneurial innovative, interdisciplinary study modules for the students. The project has received funding from Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Education (SIU) and the funding mainly covered the mobility costs of all activities during the project in 2013 – 2015. This publication consists of two parts (A+B). The part A includes five articles related to the implementation, results and evaluation of the project. The first article describes the whole project and its main activities and the second article introduces the assessment of the seminars by the participants. The third and fourth articles present the achievement of the objectives from the perspectives of the participating teachers and students. Finally, the fifth article of the part A introduces the evaluation of the whole project. The second part of the publication, part B, includes articles written by the Finnish, Danish and Russian professors, lecturers and staff members. The articles deal with entrepreneurship education, creativity, practical training, and cultural differences. All the articles are based on the concrete insights gained from the NORU project. The articles are arranged in the following order: first come the articles focusing on several activities of the NORU project. The subsequent articles present one activity of the NORU project and after that the articles, which deal with more general aspects of entrepreneurship education and innovativeness in higher education with the links to the overall NORU project are presented. All in all, it is assumed that this publication describes the whole project, its activities and content in a very concrete way, and therefore it is a good document both for the participants of the project and for those who consider implementing a same kind of project in the near future