2. Entrepreneurship education

Different approaches to entrepreneurship education

Entrepreneurship education can be very flexible and adapt to the different conditions of HEIs and their ecosystems. For this reason, there are many different pedagogical approaches. Students can be asked to create a business venture, brainstorm ideas about a potential venture and simulate the creation of a company during courses or extracurricular activities such as competitions or hackathons. It can also include courses during which students listen to an entrepreneur sharing success stories and challenges to venture creation (for more information, see Box 2.2) (Lackéus, 2020[7]).

All case studies have a comprehensive approach to entrepreneurship education

Besides the focus on leadership, all 11 case study universities have a rather comprehensive curricular coverage of entrepreneurship, which provides them with national and international visibility. For instance, the Princeton Review lists the Tecnológico de Monterrey entrepreneurship undergraduate course top of its annual ranking, along with a very selective group of American universities.1 This illustrates the long-standing efforts of the institution, which started providing curricular coverage of entrepreneurship as early as 1978. Nowadays, the Tecnológico de Monterrey counts 200 professors of entrepreneurship, 30 of which hold a PhD degree in entrepreneurship. It offers a mandatory entrepreneurship course, which lasts for 1 semester, counts around 12 000 students and adopts an experiential-teaching approach, the development of prototypes and testing of business models, together with the preparation of business pitch presentations. 

Siglo 21 Business University (Siglo 21) in Argentina runs entrepreneurship courses since 2014, with the possibility of obtaining specific credits in this area. The university also offers a Certificate in Entrepreneurial Skills, which are issued since 2017, and such courses attract about 3 000 individuals. Some of the dedicated courses, which in some cases are compulsory, include topics such as entrepreneurship development, university entrepreneurship, creativity and entrepreneurship, and digital tools for entrepreneurship, offering students a multidimensional approach to entrepreneurship. Furthermore, students are exposed to innovation and entrepreneurship through practical experiences, project-based learning, prototyping and addressing different sorts of challenges. All of these efforts provide them with an overall innovation- and entrepreneurial-focused learning experience, also shared in their final projects. To capitalise on its legacy and reinforce its ongoing initiatives as an entrepreneurial university, Siglo 21 is planning to launch a new entrepreneurship bachelor’s programme in 2022. 

Some case study universities have even created their own entrepreneurial competency model. At ICESI, in Colombia, all entrepreneurial teaching and learning activities, including curricular programmes and courses, are designed and implemented according to its own entrepreneurial competencies model. This model relies on a set of 13 dimensions that are considered critical for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. Inspired by the EntreComp Framework as developed by Bacigalupo et al. (2016[3]), these dimensions are: vision of entrepreneurial career; self-confidence; flexibility; perception amplitude; decision-making; company management; goal orientation; action orientation; social sensitivity; conceptual thinking; empathy; entrepreneurial networking; and market orientation.

A focus on science-based entrepreneurship

Among case study HEIs, those with faculties in economics, engineering and science have developed a specific approach to entrepreneurship to bridge science and business. For instance, Adolfo Ibáñez University in Chile runs tailored programmes for its business and engineering school graduates such as an MSc in Innovation from the business school, an MSc in Technology Entrepreneurship from the science and engineering school or an MSc in Sustainable Entrepreneurship. The Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) offers some Master of Business Administration (MBA) programmes with a focus on innovation and entrepreneurship, such as is the case of the Master in Business Innovation (MBI or MBA in Innovation) or the ITI Master in Business Administration (MBA in Information, Technology and Innovation for Business, with strong digital entrepreneurial contents). The science and engineering school offers technology-based entrepreneurship programmes. In addition, the university has a Start-up School for undergraduate students in engineering. The Start-up School offers classes in project-based learning, lean start-up or design thinking, with high levels of flexibility. Active learning and flipped classroom approaches are the most commonly used pedagogical approaches.2 Students can complete their degrees by engaging in a practical entrepreneurial experience, which is recognised as an internship. University representatives consider this as the most promising and popular option for students and they estimate that, in the future, over 30% of students will opt for this choice giving them the possibility to start their own business (or attempt to start it) full time in one semester or part time in two semesters.

The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC) offers mandatory training in innovation and entrepreneurship to all students of their engineering school. Several other elective courses aim at teaching students about entrepreneurship and innovation such as an MSc in Innovation for professionals, or a minor or major programme in innovation. It is also common to find entrepreneurship courses that are taught jointly by a PUC faculty member and a guest entrepreneur. 

Recognising the need to bridge research and innovation, case study universities offer entrepreneurship education to faculty members, researchers and PhD students, as observed in other international cases, such as I-Corps (Box 2.4). Entrepreneurship education in these cases aims to help researchers bring their scientific results closer to the markets and value creation. Researchers should achieve a better understanding of business opportunities as drivers for research activities, projects and outcomes. However, these curricular coverage efforts seem to be in general at an earlier stage of development, less structured and less able to be mainstreamed across different PhD programmes and students.

The digitalisation of extracurricular activities supporting entrepreneurship

Extracurricular entrepreneurship education is also offered online. Since 2007, the University of São Paulo (USP) organises i“NN”, an online new-business programme. Over 15 years, the i“NN” programme has involved hundreds of students and spurred the creation of 90 new start-up companies. The USP offers other online courses in entrepreneurship, for instance on the Coursera platform, showing the potential of remote learning also in the field of entrepreneurship.

As in other domains, the COVID-19 pandemic catalysed the digitalisation of entrepreneurship education and many programmes have been converted into online sessions. Among the advantages of digital transformation, there is the possibility of involving international contributors and participants. Case study universities discussed the possibility of some of the innovations brought about by the pandemic becoming permanent in the future, possibly combining face-to-face and remote contents or components.

Feria 21, a large pre-incubation and networking opportunity organised by Siglo 21 since 2017, represents another example of swift digital transformation. Feria 21 brings together investors, start-ups, companies and local and regional government entities, also counting on the collaboration of university alumni (Club Emprendedores 21 with more than 3 000 members). Rather than discontinuing the event because of the pandemic, the university organised it online involving more than 800 participants.

The strategic mission of universities defines their engagement

Several of the case study universities rank entrepreneurship very high in their strategic agenda. A good example of this is the Tecnológico de Monterrey. An impact evaluation, conducted in 2019 in connection with the university’s 75^th anniversary celebrations, illustrates the institute’s positive impact on its ecosystem. According to the evaluation, about 41% of the institute’s alumni are entrepreneurs. They contributed to the creation of 2.8 million jobs. More recently, and showing the importance of “collaboration and engagement” for this university, the Tecnológico de Monterrey created and implemented an SOS Programme for SMEs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The programme helped 800 companies digitalise their business. The SOS programme involved students and professors of the institute who volunteered to mentor participating SMEs. 

Another example of how central “entrepreneurship” can be in institutional strategies and activities is the Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia. This university expresses a clear vision of its entrepreneurial role, with well-defined concepts, roadmaps, structured approaches and a strong organisational structure supporting these activities. This includes the Centre for Entrepreneurship Centro Javeriano de Emprendimento and the Department of Innovation Dirección de Innovación, which together provide comprehensive support to all stages of entrepreneurial projects regardless of their level of maturity.  

Universities as entrepreneurship hubs

Case study Latin American universities play tangible roles in the entrepreneurship ecosystems in which they operate. These universities are active in connecting their research to venture creation. For example, the USP in Brazil is connected to its ecosystem through different bodies and organisations. These include an innovation agency (AUSPIN), four incubators (one of them dedicated to social innovation), a technology park hosting 75 companies, a number of maker and co-working spaces and the INNOVA.USP space for innovation and entrepreneurship. INNOVA.USP alone has incubated around 600 companies, among which 7 unicorns (start-ups that achieve a capitalisation of USD 1 billion without being listed on the stock market) creating over 30 000 jobs.

ICESI in Cali, Colombia, has been playing an important role in stimulating research activities in the field of entrepreneurship through its entrepreneurship centre (CDEE). The CDEE interacts with the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and the Colombian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and has organised the Latin American Congress on Entrepreneurial Mind-sets since 1987.

The PUC, in Santiago, has an innovation centre that provides services to local and national companies to help them build an innovation culture. Leveraging this network of companies, the centre promotes knowledge transfer and entrepreneurship activities of the university. It is located in a building dedicated to innovation and entrepreneurship and designed by a Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate. This iconic building is right at the main entrance of the university campus, thus conveying a message both of the importance of entrepreneurship and accessibility to those from outside the academic community. The innovation centre allows interactions to take place between students, faculty members, companies and entrepreneurs, which should lead to new ideas and projects. The PUC received a large private donation to create the facilities that host the centre. The aim was to bring together students from all of the PUC’s faculties and schools. The centre is governed by an innovation centre advisory board involving representatives from the local business community. The board’s primary concern is that the activities of the innovation centre reflect the innovation needs of local stakeholders. 

Universities take advantage of their multi-campus strategy to maximise their impact

Many universities take advantage of their multi-campus strategy to amplify their impact and engagement strategy. In different localities, they have the opportunity to connect with different actors, including local governments and business communities. In some cases, the localisation of a university campus explicitly relates to a regional development policy. For instance, the Tecnológico de Monterrey, which operates on 31 campuses located in 25 cities, is considered a key partner for local and regional governments.

Another example is UTEC which has well-established connections namely with chambers of commerce, SMEs, government and public agencies, as well as innovation and entrepreneurship networks established in the territories in which is located. UTEC operates “open laboratories” on three different campuses. These open laboratories are a sort of “fab labs”, places where local actors, including businesses, can create and test new ideas, and experiment with new digital machinery that allows for quick prototyping. UTEC has even developed a mobile version of open laboratories, inspired by a student ideas competition. The mobile version of open laboratories is a mobile home equipped with a variety of devices, such as 3D printers and drones. The mobile home travels across different locations and in doing so allows UTEC’s entrepreneurship education activities to reach different places, people and entrepreneurs of all ages and from a variety of communities, thus making a very positive contribution to inclusive entrepreneurship and territorial cohesion. 

UTEC also focuses on social aspects of entrepreneurship. For instance, it promotes on its campuses programmes of entrepreneurship for co-operatives, a social innovation laboratory and co-operates with the social entrepreneurship platform ASHOKA. Among other initiatives, UTEC campuses have put in place Arena Emprendedora, a project aimed at dealing with gender balance by stimulating women’s entrepreneurial skills.

Universities as components of a dynamic ecosystem

In general, there is a symbiotic relationship between universities and their own ecosystems. This feature has been observed also in case study Latin American universities. Some universities are embedded in very dynamic ecosystems supporting high-end research, cutting-edge start-ups and technology development. The Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in Brazil is based in the city of São Carlos, in the central eastern region of the state of São Paulo. São Carlos is Brazil’s National Capital of Technology, due to its high ratio of doctors per resident (1 per 180), while the rest of the country averages 1 per 5 423 (UFSCar, n.d.[11]). The location of the very first incubator in Latin America, the city of São Carlos is active in research, innovation activities, patents and intellectual property. UFSCar is one of three important universities that belong to this São Carlos innovation ecosystem, which organises a number of science-related events on a periodical basis. Some of the key components of the São Carlos innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem include three technological parks: FabLabs, Maker Spaces and Co-Working Facilities. Detailed progress reports show the outcomes achieved by both UFSCar and the surrounding ecosystem regarding entrepreneurial activities. Yet another example of being open to the outside world, the UFSCar library also operates as a community library and is seen as a meeting space.

The São Carlos ecosystem has developed some governance arrangements, without creating a central management authority, to avoid excessive planning and remain open to stakeholders. This governance generates an annual plan and events that offer many opportunities to involve new players (Report Sanca Hub, 2022[12])

Also due to its vibrant technological ecosystem, the UFSCar has accumulated a portfolio with over 200 patents, 20 of them with active licensing agreements that generate relevant income for the institution. Some of the patents have high societal impacts, namely those related to agriculture. The UFSCar innovation portfolio has leveraged several start-ups and some of them scaled up into global companies (e.g. NANOX, which provides nanotechnology surface materials with antimicrobial properties). 

The pandemic did not break the linkages between universities and their ecosystems

All case-study universities were able to adapt their activities to the new context generated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Universities were forced to move entrepreneurship education online, sometimes providing teachers with specific training, on the use of online platforms and digital methodologies. In addition, universities focused their efforts on helping their local communities as well as companies, SMEs and entrepreneurs in their networks face new problems raised by the pandemic. As already discussed above, several universities engaged with SMEs to help them develop digital tools to manage business activities. Overall, the pandemic somehow broadened the networks of universities concerning entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activities, engaging more people, including international experts, through online platforms. Anahuac University in Mexico provides a relevant example of the “silver lining” impact of the pandemic. During the COVID-19 pandemic and under the sponsorship of Santander, the university organised a series of webinars, which provided training to over 3 000 SMEs, helping them overcome the business difficulties and challenges raised by COVID-19. 

Capitalising on the expertise accumulated during the pandemic, several case study universities plan to move towards blended entrepreneurial approaches and activities, where face-to-face interactions are used when relevant and are complemented with online solutions and experiences. Blended approaches to entrepreneurship education and activities will allow the creation of larger networks (new ecosystems) involving regional, national and international partners. 

Curricular coverage of entrepreneurship

Based on information gathered in online interviews and interactions, case study universities and universities looking to strengthen their entrepreneurial agenda in the Latin-American region could consider a series of insights to improve curricular and extracurricular entrepreneurship education, as well as external activities connected with entrepreneurship. These include:

• Increasing the number and outreach of mandatory courses in entrepreneurship, to assure that all students, and not only those in business or engineering schools, get some curricular coverage of entrepreneurship-related topics and develop entrepreneurial mind-sets.

• Promoting entrepreneurship and innovation education for PhD students as a complement to their scientific skills. Most PhD students will develop a career outside academia and entrepreneurial skills may be useful to empower them vis-à-vis alternative career choices, including starting their own business or becoming innovators in existing organisations.   

• Connecting the different institutional experiences would help promote curricular entrepreneurship education in Latin America. Collaboration among HEIs can make entrepreneurial teaching and learning both more efficient and more inclusive, going beyond the boundaries of business and engineering schools. 

Extracurricular activities

Collaboration and specialisation could also feature extracurricular activities, which have the advantage of being more flexible and more accessible for motivated students.

• Reducing fragmentation of extracurricular teaching and learning opportunities. Case study universities presented a large, yet often fragmented list of extracurricular entrepreneurial initiatives. There is scope to improve the co-ordination and exchange of students across Latin America. In addition, the optimisation of activities may also allow further specialisation to more advanced topics and customised extracurricular activities to sectors or other specific needs.

• Benchmarking extracurricular initiatives. Taking into account the speed of evolution connected with the nature of entrepreneurial extracurricular activities, Latin American universities would benefit from sharing best practices and continuous benchmarking with ongoing international initiatives, assuring that the most innovative and effective approaches are identified and present in their portfolios.

• Promoting outreach by hybridisation of their extracurricular activities. Capitalising on the expertise developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, case study universities should be able to find a good mix between face-to-face and online interactions for entrepreneurial extracurricular activities. This would allow a broader outreach of entrepreneurship education and the possibility to involve contributions and content from experts, speakers or entrepreneurs located anywhere in the world.

Entrepreneurship education to connect to the needs of the ecosystem

By engaging with entrepreneurship, HEIs become more porous and accessible to external stakeholders. Hence, promoting entrepreneurship is also a way to promote collaboration.

• Creating incentives for faculty and staff to engage in entrepreneurial activities. Case study universities have been putting in place incentives for staff to engage in entrepreneurial activities and they should continue the implementation of these. More generally, universities across the region could consider generating incentives to stimulate the engagement of faculty members in entrepreneurship activities. These “incentives” could take the form of financial rewards, profit sharing, spinoff or patent-related matters but, also, how the contributions made to such activities are considered when decisions are made in the recruitment or promotion of academic staff.  

• Connecting with other Latin American universities to share best practices about the way in which entrepreneurship helps universities connect with their communities. The variety of initiatives put in place by case study universities to connect with their stakeholders shows the possibility of “federating” different experiences across universities and collecting good practices. This could improve learning from good practices and pave the way for joint efforts conducted by groups of Latin American universities supporting each other in promoting entrepreneurship in the sub-continent. 

• Generating additional resources through entrepreneurship and collaboration. Entrepreneurial universities diversify funding solutions. A larger venture system could be able to respond to customised priorities and services. Such a funding mechanism should be able to cover the full spectrum of needs coming from entrepreneurs connected with universities in Latin America.  

• Increasing predictability and sustainability of funds allocated to entrepreneurial activities in the university. As in other parts of the world, in Latin American case study universities, there is a need for sustainable allocations of resources supporting entrepreneurship activities. Sustainable and predictable funding would help to operate incubation or acceleration activities.  

• Improving intellectual property services. The need for better intellectual property services was mentioned by different case study universities that do not have enough funding to hire legal services specialised in intellectual property development. Also in Latin America, entrepreneurial universities are confronted with bureaucratic obstacles when trying to develop intellectual property (patents, licenses and spin-offs). The administrative procedures required are lengthy and costly for universities that do not have dedicated staff.