The Virtuous Cycle of Entrepreneurship: developing a student-centric approach to teaching and learning entrepreneurship

Abstract

Minimal attention is paid to the impact of academic entrepreneurship teaching approaches on the actual development of entrepreneurs. Identifying the dissonance of current process-based and hypothetical teaching approaches in academia to create entrepreneurs, we argue teaching approaches must apply real-life practical learning to curriculum to create entrepreneurs. Using research on how people learn to become entrepreneurs and how adults learn informally we present a novel experiential problem-based approach to entrepreneurship education (EE) using the Virtuous Cycle of Entrepreneurship (VCE). Focused on student-agency, autonomy, and intrinsic motivation, while positioning faculty as facilitators in the student's entrepreneurial learning journey the VCE creates interactive and iterative, student-centered learning, that mimics real-life entrepreneurship learning. We outline how this novel approach to teaching entrepreneurship increases the number of students actually pursuing entrepreneurship to stimulate today's student to become entrepreneurs while also making a positive impact on their personal and professional development.