Developing a Sustainable Innovative Pedagogy for Teaching Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Leading Studentss Thinking Towards Nature for Restoring the Ecological Balance Through Social Entrepreneurship Startups

Abstract

Learning and Teaching of entrepreneurship has been a big challenge for higher education institutions. While the subject spans the entire spectrum of management learning, the psychometric traits linked to entrepreneurial behavior have always been difficult to inculcate in students coming from diverse cultural background. For sustainable learning of entrepreneurship, it is important to develop an eco-system which engages students through various stages of entrepreneurial journey without the encumbrance of financial & logistics constraints. The effectiveness of management and business simulation games was found to be sub-par in sustaining student interest over a longer learning period. To overcome these challenges, the authors conceptualized an innovative learning pedagogy testing a theoretical model through a longitudinal study integrating physical resources, knowledge management, IT interface through a virtual reality based game and several labs in campus to support the initiative. All institutions today are supporting startups but few have a focus of leading students thinking towards natural wealth and develop ways and means of harnessing it without disturbing the ecological balance. In developing economies of Asian African region, almost 80% resources are offered by nature and population of equivalent proportion is dependent on value added products and services that have their roots in natural abundance produce. In modern evolving times, most of the efforts are centered on IT applications to make urban processes faster and smoother. While this effort helps the 20% to 35% of total population, intense competition in startups based on intangibles leads to a high failure rate. The authors thus wanted to chart a course of action through an innovative pedagogy which leads to divergent thought process in students, generating oft-the-beaten-track ideas and then support the students in taking their ideas to launch stage through numerous interfaces adding value and making them more secure of failure through subsequent stages.