Education for Sustainability Beyond the Classroom: Companies Born in University Incubators

Abstract

The objective of this article was to understand the sense of developing a business which incorporates sustainability principles, and debating the role of the university in fostering socio-environmental practices among the new generation of entrepreneurs, with a focus on Brazilian experiences. The intention was to fill a gap in the literature, which focuses its efforts on the analysis of the education for sustainability in formal business courses and not on the incubation spaces at universities. This qualitative research investigated companies in incubator programs at four Brazilian university business incubators regarding the attention to the way the business project is selected in the incubators; the sources and nature of the incubators’ socio-environmental concerns, the meaning of sustainability for these entrepreneurs, the way they put these principles into action in their business plans, the difficulties and challenges they face in meeting socio-environmental goals in their companies, and the inductor incubator’s role in fostering sustainable businesses. The results shows that the actions of these young entrepreneurs externalize, more than anything, a concern with developing products and services which reduce environmental damage. Despite this being a laudable effort, it gives little indication that this generation of entrepreneurs is reviewing traditional management presuppositions or proposing new business formats regarding sustainability. Beyond this, the results also show that the investment in education for sustainability at university incubators seemed to be almost nonexistent, which has consequences for generations of born and raised companies in this academic environment.