Abstract
Today’s students are prospective entrepreneurs, as well as potential employees in modern, start-up-like intrapreneurship environments within established companies. In these settings, software development projects face extreme requirements in terms of innovation and attractiveness of the end-product. They also suffer severe consequences of failure such as termination of the development effort and bankruptcy. As the abilities needed in start-ups are not among those traditionally taught in universities, new knowledge and skills are required to prepare students for the volatile environment that new market entrants face. This article reports experiences gained during seven years of teaching start-up knowledge and skills in a higher-education institution. Using a design-based research approach, we have developed the Software Factory, an educational environment for experiential, project-based learning. We offer a collection of patterns and anti-patterns that help educational institutions to design, implement and operate physical environments, curricula and teaching materials, and to plan interventions that may be required for project-based start-up education.
Highlights
Entrepreneurship has been identified as a key solution for future employment.For example, to support the development of entrepreneurial skills, knowledge, and attitudes, the European Commission’s Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan puts special emphasis on entrepreneurial education [1]
Even though software start-ups may be prime examples of the entrepreneurial world, higher-education institutions must still decide on their role in providing timely and useful education on how to introduce entrepreneurial aspects alongside the core expectations of the computer science program
In keeping with the idea of reflective practice (e.g., [5, 6]), we look back at the past seven years of Software Factory projects and extract insights related to start-up education
Summary
Entrepreneurship has been identified as a key solution for future employment.For example, to support the development of entrepreneurial skills, knowledge, and attitudes, the European Commission’s Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan puts special emphasis on entrepreneurial education [1]. Teaching start-up-related knowledge and skills requires an environment where students can experience the consequences of their actions This both gives meaning to students’ experiences and solidifies their prior knowledge, creating a fertile ground for posing questions that motivate further learning. To prepare for this, the European Union’s Joint Research Centre’s “Entrepreneurship Competence Framework” defines 15 competences that should be integrated into the educational fabric [9] These include both motivation and team-work skills, and several personal traits such as creativity, self-awareness, self-efficacy, and perseverance. Strengthening these in software engineering educa tion is not straightforward and requires integrating new pedagogical approaches 80 with knowledge from entrepreneurial research into the core subject areas.
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