Abstract
Whilst doctoral students comprise a large group of researchers at a university and will potentially play important roles in the utilization and transfer of research results, prior research studies have paid little attention to the effect of entrepreneurship education on PhD students with a science and technology orientation. This paper seeks to address this gap in knowledge and examines four key elements in the design and evolution of good practice in entrepreneurship education for this group of students: (1) learning tools, (2) inspiration, (3) interdisciplinarity, and (4) boundary spanning networks. The paper illustrates the importance of identifying the balance between theory and practice that will attract students from across the spectrum of science and technology fields. It also shows that a hands-on experimental methodology is an effective pedagogical strategy that uses learning by doing as an essential tool in problem solving.
Highlights
Various authors have suggested that the educational focus in undergraduate and postgraduate education has shifted intensity from a specialist orientation toward one that focuses on the development of general competences and various types of skills
A number of key findings emerged from the analysis of the retrospective evaluation with the previous Entrepreneurship in Theory and Practice” programme (ETP) programme participants
The ETP was not meant to be a compulsory module for doctoral students and it was assumed that it should be able to sell itself on its own missions and merits i.e. the content had to be attractive enough in order to interest students from an academic context where entrepreneurship is usually not on the agenda
Summary
Various authors have suggested that the educational focus in undergraduate and postgraduate education has shifted intensity from a specialist orientation toward one that focuses on the development of general competences and various types of skills. Universities have actively been playing a larger role in regional and national economic and social development (Gibb and Hannon 2006; Youtie and Shapira 2008; Svensson et al 2012). This includes the role universities play in the formation of human capital through education and research that has led to the emergence of a numerous initiatives designed to promote entrepreneurial activities within academic institutions such as entrepreneurship programmes, incubator facilities, and projects that link the university with regional businesses (Klofsten and Jones-Evans 2000; Hayter and Link 2015; Grimaldi et al 2011). Entrepreneurship education for doctoral students remains a fairly unexplored topic doctoral students comprise one of the larger groups of researchers at a university, play an important role in the creation of knowledge that utilizes research results, and are likely to become the future senior researchers whose intentions and actions will strongly affect how scientific output is developed and disseminated within higher education institutions (Thune 2009; Boh et al 2016; Guerrero et al 2016)
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