10.2478/9788395771361-002

CHAPTER 2

Entrepreneurial Mindset and the University Curriculum

Reference: Ridley, Davis and Korovyakovskaya (2017).

Until recently, most American university management programs focused on the development of students for work in corporate settings with little focus on entrepreneurial skills. The need for graduates with an entrepreneurial mindset has grown. A framework for developing students campus-wide with an entrepreneurial mindset across the management education curriculum is proposed. First, foundational theories and concepts are introduced to students. Next, they learn, practice and reflect on skills necessary for entrepreneurship. Student entrepreneurial mindset is further developed through business plan and case competitions. Finally, students apply the concepts and theories via student-run companies housed within business, science, engineering and technology incubators.

INTRODUCTION

Mindset

Countries such as those of the former Soviet Union, Sub Sahara Africa, South America and formerly oppressed minorities in the Unites States of America appear to be frozen in time with regards to entrepreneurship. Each of these communities has received American aid with little to show for it. The reason is that little attention has been paid to the debilitating mindset that remained after their segregation from a modernizing world. This is despite the fact that many universities have introduced entrepreneurship education to raise the capabilities of practicing managers. This paper presents a management education design for engineers and managers who have only a paucity of entrepreneurial family background and experience. To reconstruct confidence, evidence is shown that capitalism, democracy and rule of law constitute a joint indicator for economic success and pathway to understanding the rationale and benefits of entrepreneurship. Then, support is provided through the integration of curricula, faculty research and invention mining, munificent incubators, community, and angel investment of financial and human capital. The objective is to raise the rate of entrepreneurship and business formation, gross domestic product, and the size of the world’s economy for the benefit of all.

Pedagogy

Entrepreneurship is the process of starting a business, typically a startup company offering an innovative product, process or service. This pedagogical paper is designed to have a positive impact on any community that lacks a tradition of formal business activity. Ridley and Davis (2009) and Ridley, McKinley-Floyd and Davis (2008) proposed concepts that laid out strategies for entrepreneurship education and community transformation. Some of their strategies have already been implemented. Elements of entrepreneurship were added to a course while converting the method of teaching to live case study. Unlike traditional static paper case study, live case study involves multiple student visits to existing companies to gather data and information. Under the guidance of the professor, students construct a company supply chain, including random numbers, and create computer color graphics animated simulations of the supply chain. Not only do the students gain hands on experiential research and learning, they consider all elements of the data, including randomness and distribution. They are forced to review all of their quantitative prerequisite courses on statistics, operations research, calculus, accounting and finance, and learn to apply the principles of queuing theory, goodness of fit and other hypothesis testing. The end products are simulated pro-forma cash flow and income statements, and a balance sheet. There is no assuming away randomness by way of simple averaging. This is critical to arriving at correct answers when queues and asymmetric distributions are involved. The evidence of achievement is the several student intellectual contributions in conference presentations and proceedings publications (see Ridley, et., al. 2011, Brown, et., al. 2011, Abrams, et., al. 2011, Crafton, et., al. 2011, Ridley, Corner, et., al. 2012, Ridley, Foree, et., al. 2012, Ridley, Bryan, et., al. 2012).

There exist opportunities for more institutions to link entrepreneurship education to the creation of business enterprises that transform communities and bring wealth accumulation and economic viability to the individuals and communities in which these businesses operate (Mugge 2005). The basis of university and college entrepreneurship programs is that entrepreneurship is the single most important factor in determining whether a region or community achieves its full potential (Mugge 2005). Practicing entrepreneurs support entrepreneurial education and research (Zeitham and Rice 1987). Successful economic and technological models of regional development such as the Silicon Valley in Northern California, the Route 128 Corridor in Massachusetts, and the Research Triangle in North Carolina are clustered around universities. The establishment of an entrepreneurial culture and rapid development of technology-based clusters are two very important accomplishments that will serve as defining measures of a community’s competitive advantage in a contemporary economy (National Governors Association 2004). U.S. News (2015) uses entrepreneurship to rate schools of business. Still, many universities lag behind in entrepreneurship course offerings. This is especially true of those that serve students from communities that lack a tradition of formal private business activity. Examples include formally oppressed minorities in the United States of America (USA) and former communist soviet countries like Russia and those constituting the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). While it is true that minority businesses in the USA grew 45.4 percent between 1997 and 2002, ninety percent had no employees (Harris, Edmunds and Chen, 2011).

Organization

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. We begin with a review of the related literature. Prior research on mindset focused on factors that impact entrepreneurial intentions and self-efficacy, which if understood might enhance entrepreneurial activity and success. This paper focuses on the implication of extreme paucity of entrepreneurship in family background, leading to confusion about the factors governing economic success and perpetual avoidance of entrepreneurship. Next, we introduce an index that reflects the degree of capitalism, democracy, and rule of law (CDR index) that we assert is the main driver of global economic success. We offer CDR as prolegomena to thinking about entrepreneurship. The purpose is to counter a debilitating mindset and insurmountable obstacle that can stymie all other efforts to raise entrepreneurial intentions, self-efficacy and competence via entrepreneurship education and environmental munificence. This index is offered as a pathway to motivation and foundation for the pursuit of entrepreneurship activities at the university. The references to ancient scientists and inventors, their year of birth and death, and their need to overcome difficulties despite their genius, are intended to inspire students. Next, we introduce the concept of an Interdisciplinary Entrepreneurship Center (IEC). The paper proposes one framework scenario in which it might impact the institutional mindset. In that framework the IEC executes specific tactics via all relevant college and institutional activities as well as community sources of support and benefits. Concluding remarks include suggestions for further research.

RELATED LITERATURE

The interest in entrepreneurship seems constantly to be escalating. Berglund and Holmgren (2006) suggested that entrepreneurship has disseminated from an industrial sphere to other spheres such as the public, academic, private and the educational. In the academic sphere, a growing number of colleges and universities throughout the world now offer courses and programs in entrepreneurship (Gartner and Vesper 1994) within their business or engineering programs both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Entrepreneurship programs are among the fastest growing initiatives in modern colleges and universities (Laud, Betts and Basu, 2015; Mattare, 2010). Harrington and Maysami (2015) articulate the role that entrepreneurially engaged regional universities may have in improving their communities. While considerable research and writing has been done with regard to the number of colleges and universities that now teach courses or that have such programs, little has been done with regard to what specific courses are taught and what a model curriculum might include in creating an entrepreneurial mindset.

Ede, Panigrahi, and Calcich (1998) indicated that the surging interest of many business schools in entrepreneurship education has been to the delight of the pro-entrepreneurship public, government, and the media, and there does not seem to be any documented research on attitudes and feelings of business students toward the entrepreneurship emphasis in the curriculum. The authors further suggested that business educators need to go beyond introducing entrepreneurship into the curriculum to fitting this curriculum to the needs of their present and prospective students. Hatten and Ruhland (1995) suggested that identifying and nurturing potential entrepreneurs throughout the education process could produce more successful entrepreneurs. Ede, et. al. (1998) indicated that their research pointed to the need for entrepreneurial interaction and mentoring in all aspects of the entrepreneurship curriculum. It cannot be left to experiences outside of course work.

Kussmaul, et. al. (2006) and several other researchers indicated that many institutions offer curricula...