Small firms and the growth stage: can entrepreneurship education programmes be supportive?

Sylvain Bureau, Elisa Salvador and Jacqueline Fendt
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Sylvain Bureau: ESCP Europe - Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris
Jacqueline Fendt: ESCP Europe - Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris

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Abstract: Whilst entrepreneurship education is booming, it focuses largely on nascent entrepreneurs and company creation. In contrast, a major challenge in small business entrepreneurship is growth. The authors first position growth and its barriers in small firms in the context of current theory and practice in entrepreneurship education: from this analysis, they identify prerequisites and drivers for growth-related entrepreneurship training for small businesses. A pedagogical experiment focused on growth, targeted at a mixed audience of small firm entrepreneurs and graduate students enrolled in an entrepreneurship major in a business school, is then described. The experiment is presented as an integrated process model. The authors suggest that such programmes could be developed in three main directions: (a) changing the culture of business schools so that they become less individualcentred and more open and value-creating for their students and the external community; (b) strongly and regularly involving entrepreneurship students in the realities of business beyond start-up; and (c) making systematic and sophisticated use of the Internet for enhancing growth through e-learning and community-building.

Keywords: entrepreneurship education; entrepreneurial ventures; entrepreneurial growth; action learning; business schools; community management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02530098v1
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Industry and Higher Education, 2012, 26 (2), pp.79-100

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