Systematic Planning and Organizing Entrepreneurial Activities: A Holistic Approach for Fostering Entrepreneurial Thinking

Abstract

Entrepreneurs are important in every economy to close gaps and create market innovative products/technology/services by using the necessary knowledge and effort. A nation's total development is accelerated by an entrepreneurial culture since it encourages the emergence of more venture capitalists, which in turn strengthens the economy of the country. In order to develop students into entrepreneurs, Rajarambapu Institute of Technology (RIT), Rajaramnagar, an Autonomous institute, introduced a choice-based curriculum system (CBCS) in 2017–18 that featured Entrepreneurship Development (ED) as one of the four tracks. It was investigated that, students were lagging in the skills like critical problemsolving, creative thinking, communication, and teamwork abilities that an entrepreneur need. In this paper, 4 thrust area were identified viz; Inspiration, Motivation and Ideation, Validation and Concept Development, Prototype, Design, Process Development for Business Model/ Process/ Services, Awareness about Startup and related Ecosystem Support Services for Startup Development. Various activities were conducted addressing the above thrust areas which benefited the students in term of development of prototypes. Keywords— Design Thinking; Entrepreneurial culture; Startup Ecosystem; Active learning.