Abstract
Entrepreneurship is considered a key driver for economic growth. Therefore, more and more studies are investigating the role and effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. In this context, the present study is aimed at investigating the effectiveness of entrepreneurship programs, with a learning-by-doing approach, on the entrepreneurial intention, entrepreneurial characteristics (entrepreneurial attitude, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, entrepreneurial mindset, core self-evaluation) and entrepreneurial skills (creativity, financial literacy, marshaling of resources, planning, teamwork). The study has analyzed a short intensive online entrepreneurship program, which adopts a learning-by-doing approach and targets students from different European technical universities, with different levels of education and different entrepreneurial backgrounds, giving them the opportunity to work on different types of projects. Pre- and post-course surveys were conducted in order to perform qualitative analyses on the effectiveness of the program. The results show that the entrepreneurial intention and perception of the entrepreneurial characteristics and skills of the students increased after participation in the program. In addition, our findings reveal that the program appears to be more effective for MSc students than for PhD ones and for students who had never attended any entrepreneurship program before, while there is no difference in the effectiveness of the program in terms of gender.
Highlights
It is widely recognized that entrepreneurship plays a key role in fostering economic growth and job creation (Thurik and Wennekers 2004)
The present study is aimed at investigating the effectiveness of entrepreneurship programs, with a learning-by-doing approach, on the entrepreneurial intention, entrepreneurial characteristics and entrepreneurial skills
The results show that the entrepreneurial intention and perception of the entrepreneurial characteristics and skills of the students increased after participation in the program
Summary
It is widely recognized that entrepreneurship plays a key role in fostering economic growth and job creation (Thurik and Wennekers 2004) In such a context, both policy makers and academics have recognized the importance of more commitment to entrepreneurship, even at the university level, to spread knowledge and best practices (European Commission 2012). Universities, which are primary sources of cutting-edge knowledge, play an important role in training individuals who are able to acquire, transform, and exploit such knowledge (Zahra and George 2002; Colombelli et al 2021a) Such individuals are often students who are able to apply their knowledge to have an impact on society through the creation of new innovative enterprises or spread them by entering the labor market (Larsson et al 2017; Wenninger 2018). Scholars are dedicating more and more attention to the creation of enterprises by university students (Bergmann et al 2016; Minola et al 2016; Chiarello et al 2021)
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