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Entrepreneurship is a wondrous human activity that cuts across all sectors and aspects of human existence. It is a broad and inclusive term, which serves as an umbrella concept for numerous phenomena (Żur, 2014). Whether at individual or company level, academically entrepreneurship is typically associated with opportunity. Opportunity is referred to as the dominant thread in current mainstream entrepreneurship research (Shane, 2000; Venkataram et al., 2012). According to Stevenson & Jarillo (1990), the pursuit of opportunity defines the ability of the individual, as well as that of the organization, to be entrepreneurial. Contemporary coexisting convictions regarding entrepreneurshipare rather completing than competing, all referring to the identification, evaluation and pursuit of opportunity (Stevenson & Jarillo, 1990; Jones & Butler, 1992; Shane & Venkataram, 2000).
Entrepreneurship & Business
At individual level, entrepreneurship is defined as the process of new business creation (Timmons, 1985), commonly referred to as start-ups. However, in the last decades entrepreneurship and new venturing has been recognized and supported in numerous other fields of human activity, including social, academic and cultural behaviour.
Company level entrepreneurship encompasses three terms. Entrepreneurial Orientation represents a company’s orientation toward entrepreneurship (Dess & Lumpkin, 2005), its culture, HR practices and other ways. It creates the predisposition of a company to act in entrepreneurial ways. Corporate Entrepreneurship(CE) refers to actual entrepreneurial behaviour exhibited by the company itself (Zahra & Kuratko, 1999). Antonicic & Hisrich (2001, p. 23) specify that CE is a “process of creation of new businesses, and other innovative activities, such as development of new products, services, technologies, administrative techniques, strategies and competitive postures.” The third term intrapreneurship relates to entrepreneurial behaviour of employees (Pinchot, 1985; Kanter, 1985).
Entrepreneurship in its broad and more popular sense is also conceptualized and perceived as a universal set of skills and attitudes that can be applied in undertakings in every context – new business, company project, social venture or international cultural exhibition (Di-Masi, 2010). Entrepreneurship skills and attitudes are essential at all stages of a professional career and add substantial value to all human activity. All existing conceptualizations of entrepreneurship are rather completing than competing, all relying on three leading measures: innovation, risk-taking and pro-activeness (Miller, 1983).
Why is Entrepreneurship Important?
In the new century, entrepreneurship has been moving away from traditional management practices towards a more practical, hands-on orientation, better fitting to the extreme uncertain environments in which entrepreneurs operate in. This is reflected in a paradigm shift from comprehensive upfront business planning and traditional accounting methods (though well-approved in established businesses, but not well applicable to start-ups) to more agile and lean business modelling, validation and innovation accounting practices. Most famous representatives are the Business Model Canvas introduced by Osterwalder et al. (2010), the Lean Start-Up approaches by Ries (2011) and Blank (2010, incl. his customer development approach, 2005), the conquest of the Design Thinking methodology in the business domain in the 21st century or new innovation accounting practices such as Moneyball for Start-Ups by McClure (2010). Since then, we observe a new wave of tools and methods especially designed for entrepreneurs and multiple additional canvases and tools have been developed on top of those game-changing approaches. Examples are Ash Maruya´s Lean Canvas (2012 [2010]) or Osterwalder et al.´s Value Proposition Canvas (2015), to name but a few.
Interestingly, with the renaissance of corporate entrepreneurship in the era of digitalization and disruptive innovation (in line with Christensen´s Innovator´s Dilemma, 1997), we see those contemporary entrepreneurship approaches increasingly being converted back to traditional management of established businesses of all sizes, which are trying to stay innovative and alive by adapting modern start-up approaches for their own management. Ries for example adapted his Lean Start-Up Approach for companies and Viki, Toma and Gons (2017) recently introduced an Innovation Ecosystem to support corporates innovating like start-ups without becoming like start-ups.
Educating Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurship has received immense academic (and non-academic) attention in the last decades (Stevenson & Lundstrüm, 2001). It is an important area of inquiry, especially relevant in times of crisis and economic challenges. Furthermore, the European Union has launched numerous programs aimed at creating and reinforcing the entrepreneurial culture and entrepreneurship education is a fundamental element of its policy. European conceptual frameworks for entrepreneurship education encourage building an “entrepreneurial spirit, development of creativity, initiative and self-confidence.” The European Union defines as one of the eight key competences for Lifelong Learning “Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship”:
It is the ability to turn ideas into action. It involves creativity, innovation and risk-taking, as well as the ability to plan and manage projects in order to achieve objectives. The individual is aware of the context of his/her work and is able to seize opportunities that arise. It is the foundation for acquiring more specific skills and knowledge needed by those establishing or contributing to social or commercial activity. This should include awareness of ethical values and promote good governance (European Parliament and Council, 2006).
Therefore, much effort is put into promoting entrepreneurial behaviour across countries. The European Commission has stated in their Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan that investing in entrepreneurship education is one of the highest return investments Europe can make (European Commission, 2013b). Overall, entrepreneurship education has gained importance and been implemented in the national strategies of most EU member states, given the premise that it may influence the level of entrepreneurial activity in a given country, positively impacts entrepreneurial intentions or positively influences entrepreneurial traits, supports economic growth and creates jobs (Dickson et al. 2008; European Commission, 2013b; Kuratko, 2005). Several authors have highlighted the critical role of entrepreneurship education in developing more and/or better entrepreneurs (e.g. Gorman, Hanlon, & King, 1997; Katz, 2014; Pittaway & Cope, 2007). Elert, Andersson and Wennberg (2015) have shown that entrepreneurship education increases self-confidence, long-term probability of starting a firm, as well as entrepreneurial incomes. Von Graevenitz, Harhoff and Weber (2010) confirmed the positive effects of entrepreneurship education on student’s self-assessed entrepreneurial skills and the learning process of their entrepreneurial suitability or aptitude. A survey by Jenner (2012) suggests that 15% to 20% of students who took part in a mini-company program in secondary school will later establish their own business, a percentage which is about three to five times higher than within the general population. Finally, Martin, McNally and Kay (2013) found a significant relation between entrepreneurship education/training (EET) and entrepreneurship-related human capital assets and entrepreneurship outcomes.
In the last twenty years, we have witnessed an immense and dynamic growth of entrepreneurship teaching programs all over the world. Entrepreneurship education has become a standard practice at secondary and higher education institutions in countries around the world (Katz, 2003; Kuratko, 2005). This growth in volume and scope has been coupled by a sharp shift from educating about entrepreneurship to educating for entrepreneurship. Education about entrepreneurship is limited to knowledge transfer. Students learn about starting a business, about legal and business frameworks, what does it mean to be entrepreneurial or how to prepare a business plan. The goal of this type of education is to acquaint students with many aspects of entrepreneurial practice and pursue their understanding of them. However, after many years of this standard approach, we now know that educating about entrepreneurship does not necessarily imply that students become more entrepreneurial nor that they wish to act in entrepreneurial ways (Dickson et al., 2008).
Educating for entrepreneurship is driven by a different goal. It is to develop real-life entrepreneurial skills and behaviours. Some authors go as far as to say that the goal is to change thinking and behavioural patterns (Rae 2005). Rae (2010, p. 595) defines entrepreneurial learning as “led by creativity, informality, curiosity, emotion and its application to personal and real-world problems and opportunities”. It is a holistic process, engaging numerous areas of human activity, primarily intellectual and emotional. Wilson, Vyakarnam, Volkmann, Mariotti and Rabuzzi (2009) argue that entrepreneurship education should provide a mix of experiential learning, skills building and mindset shift, ideally starting from the primary level up.
Hence, contemporary education for entrepreneurship includes the promotion and training of personal skills related to entrepreneurship, such as creativity skills, problem-solving skills, communication skills and networking skills. Repeatedly, these features have been identified in the recent past as the goals of entrepreneurial education. A meta-analysis conducted by Mwasalwiba (2010) of top entrepreneurship education programs identifies the following distribution of goals among goals of the education process:
- to enhance attitudes, values, intentions and behaviours – 36%,
- to improve personal skills – 32%,
- to develop opportunity recognition skills – 14%,
- to develop skills necessary for establishing a new business – 9% and
- to acquire general management and organizational skills – 9%.
The analysis of other publications reveals a very clear hierarchy of goals within entrepreneurship education, consistent with the above meta-analysis (Raposo & Paco, 2011). Firstly, all existing conceptualizations include the dominating goal of developing an entrepreneurial drive, spirit and culture among students. In second place comes the goal of generating the ability to recognize and pursue opportunities in various areas, whether business, social and academic. A significant number of authors associate entrepreneurship with the ability to create and operate new companies. Mwasalwiba (2010) notes that scholars in the field of entrepreneurship education are converging towards a single framework of entrepreneurship education. Still, Mwasalwiba (2010) also highlights the lack of shared success indicators and common goal definitions between educators and other stakeholders, when it comes to entrepreneurship education for different target groups.
Online Education for Entrepreneurs
The popularization of entrepreneurship education has accelerated in the last two decades in great part thanks to the new opportunities brought by information technologies. Online learning materials have become abundant and diverse. Online courses facilitate the development of entrepreneurial skills by individuals on their own by means of electronic devices. New technology has made it possible to learn from successful entrepreneurs, share experiences and exchange ideas, as already recognised by Solomon back in 2002 in his statement above. Today, thanks to technology, entrepreneurship education is not only easy to access, but it has become more inspirational than ever. Contemporary authors and educators (Pittaway & Cope, 2007; Rigg & O’Dwyer, 2012) articulate the role of inspiration as a key factor of effective education for entrepreneurship. There are not many disciplines which, like educating for entrepreneurship, require contact with a mentor, a practitioner who can share their success story and experience and provide inspiration for personal life choices. Online teaching resources make that possible.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) open a new era in entrepreneurship education. Being characterized as flexible, open, self-directed, self-paced, highly interactive including peer learning, interdisciplinary and cost-reducing, MOOC bear a huge potential to cater the needs of future and existing entrepreneurs (Welsh & Dragusin, 2013). In addition, learning data collected provide completely new opportunities (learning analytics) for educators to reflect on and improve their teaching. Mondal, Kumar and Bose (2015) have stated the valuable opportunity of using MOOCs for entrepreneurial education and training especially for developing/emerging countries (in this case India). There, MOOCs can support the provision of high quality education for learners living at far-off places, help re-integrating school-dropouts and motivate learners towards entrepreneurship and starting their own business. As described earlier, this can again stimulate the economic growth, reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of the whole population. Of course, there are also obstacles mentioned such as high drop-out rates, lack of frequent (professor) feedback, cheating, or the difficulty to assess humanities including social sciences online (Welsh & Dragusin, 2013). However, MOOCs add a modern facet to the diverse spectrum of educational offers in the domain of entrepreneurship and open up access to education to millions of learners world-wide. The newer developments and tools (see chapter 2) are also reflected in the offers of entrepreneurship MOOCs, many of them applying tools such as the business model canvas or Design Thinking in their courses.
Examples of Entrepreneurial MOOC
The existing popular online learning platforms (such as Coursera, edX, Udacity, Openlearning, Openlearn, Futurelearn, iversity, alison, Canvas Network etc.) offer a variety of MOOCs devoted to entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial skills and business start-up. These courses along with others existing on smaller platforms or websites have been analysed in order to identify best practices and most promising models within online entrepreneurship education.
In 2016, several platforms have started to provide specific MOOCs offering transferable college credit to learners who are not enrolled in any of the corresponding university’s programs. There are several collaborations between MOOC platforms and universities for the recognition of certificates and award of these kind of credits (such as EdX partnering with Arizona State University, offering full university fresh-level courses) and the number is rising constantly, which also affects digital entrepreneurship education offers (Lequerica, 2016).
In 2017, Georgia Tech and MIT for the first time offered their on-campus students the possibility of earning credits from a MOOC. Students could choose between enrolling in traditional on-campus courses or signing up for the same version available completely online. The results of these two pilots have been promising, MIT students rated the course as significantly less stressful compared to their on-campus classes. For online students, this could improve the credibility of non-credit certificates.
Shah (2018a) also identified several other MOOC trends in 2017. First of all, MOOC providers are still looking for a sustainable revenue model, from free courses, certificates, micro-credentials, university credits, online degrees to corporate training. Second, the number of completely free MOOCs is constantly shrinking, one of the core features that distinguished MOOCs from other forms of online education in the past. Third, MOOC providers have realized that their real audience are not universities and the higher education market but rather the labor market, in particular people who aim at achieving professional and career growth (also called “lifelong career learner”). Fourth, MOOCs have become increasingly flexible and convenient over the past years, adapting to the time constraints of many learners. Fifth, MOOC platforms have successfully entered into the markets for online degrees and corporate learning. Shah (2018b) stated that these two monetization models are what drives the revenue and fast growth of the big MOOC platforms, now and especially in the future. Coursera for example announced almost $10M in tuition from their online degrees, recently offered the first MOOC-based Bachelor’s Degree and has already more than 1000 corporate partners (up from 30 in 2016 and 500 at the end of 2017). This will also heavily effect entrepreneurship education, there are already several online degrees in entrepreneurship available on the several MOOC platforms and corporates are increasingly using MOOCs for training and education of their workforce, such as intrapreneurship courses to foster employee innovation and the creation of ideas within their companies.
Finally, in the context of MOOCs and entrepreneurship education, another trend already mentioned is the rise of micro-credentials over the last two years. According to a report by CTQ and Digital Promise (2016), micro-credentials can be defined as a certification indicating demonstrated competency in a specific skill. Moreover, micro-credentials have four key characteristics: competency-based, personalized, on-demand and shareable.
Laurie Pickard (2018) recently published an analysis of 450 MOOC-based micro-credentials offered on five MOOC platforms (Coursera, edX, Udacity, FutureLearn and Kadenze). Pickard states that micro-credentials include more than a single course but are less than a full degree and can be seen as a response to the trend of modularity and stackability in higher education, enabling learners to basically create their own education “playlist”. However, Pickard concludes that the current offer of various micro-credentials lacks consistency and standardization, making it difficult to evaluate their significance and compare them, for both learners and employers. It is important to note that the majority of the offered micro-credentials by the 5 platforms is paid, with price ranges from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. Learners can choose between payment for each course individually or pay upfront for the whole series, receiving a small discount.
Summary
Entrepreneurship courses themselves are a strong current trend in the global MOOC movement (see chapters 5 and 6). Their volume is growing continuously. There is already a competition going on between providers to attract learners which will be reinforced by the great number of entrepreneurship MOOCs and newer formats such as the micro-credentials and full online degrees. The question will be how these offerings differentiate from each other and if the areas of company-level entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and enlarging/furthering existing entrepreneurial skills will be tackled by MOOCs and follow-up formats. In general, a shift can already be recognized towards self-paced and regularly recurring courses. There are also tendencies to apply the original definition of MOOCs as free courses towards fee-required courses, as more and more content gets locked behind paywalls. As the education sector itself is currently disrupted by entrepreneurship, innovation pressure and digitalization processes, it also has several impacts on entrepreneurship education, such as changing business and revenue models or content delivery channels. Today, the online entrepreneurship education sector is clearly dominated by several American MOOC platforms and content created by American universities and business schools, strongly affecting entrepreneurship education in general on a global level.
The research has identified the main topics of existing online courses devoted to entrepreneurship, which are: start-ups and universal entrepreneurial skills. Compared to the first version of this paper, the number of courses in the area of corporate entrepreneurship has grown, as it clearly responds to the need of fostering entrepreneurial orientation within companies. Even though course topics and contents within entrepreneurship courses are extremely diverse, the focus is now clearly on entrepreneurship FOR entrepreneurs, using innovative tools, such as Business Canvas and Lean Approaches. Such tools have proven to be not only successful and applicable in the area of start-ups but also for corporates looking for constant innovation.
Nevertheless, the analysis has shown that course titles and descriptions not always reflect the actual content of MOOCs (e.g. mixing up idea generation and business modelling or firm-level entrepreneurship, corporate entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship). Many entrepreneurship courses also follow the same structural pattern, such as the development of canvas and a follow-up pitch by learners. This raises the question of whether this actually represents a useful and valuable application of learnings in entrepreneurship courses.
Finally, the concept of failure is missing from the MOOC agenda. Taken that many successful entrepreneurs have failed before, it is surprising that most education systems around the world do not embrace failure. Instead, millions of learners are successfully completing entrepreneurship courses every year. This might lead potential entrepreneurs to believe that starting a business is simple, requires no big effort and commitment and that success comes naturally. Even worse, failure-free entrepreneurship education can potentially promote the failure of people who are just not suitable for being an entrepreneur. This is important to keep in mind when we analyse the growing volume of online entrepreneurship courses.