How coaching services help early stage entrepreneurs: an exploration of gender differences

PurposeEntrepreneurial support organizations, such as business incubators and accelerators (BIAs), provide coaching as a core element of their service offering for startups. Yet little is known about how coaching creates value from the entrepreneur's perspective. This is an important issue given that entrepreneurship is recognized as a gendered phenomenon. The purpose of this article is to explore how the coaching services provided during incubation create value for men and women entrepreneurs.Design/methodology/approachFocusing on university business incubators, our comparative qualitative study of 18 men and women entrepreneurs takes a grounded theorizing approach, and draws abductively on entrepreneurial learning theory, to explore the dimensions of coaching services that support venture development and explain gender differences.FindingsThe emergent explanatory model suggests that venture development is supported by coaching service design (at the incubator level) and by coaching content and rapport (at the entrepreneur-coach dyad level). Gender differences were observed in the emphasis placed on accessibility of coaching services provided by the incubator and the guidance provided by the coaches. We theorize that these findings reflect differences in entrepreneurial learning.Practical implicationsTo better support entrepreneurial learning, gender differences should be considered in both the design and delivery of coaching services.Originality/valueOur findings provide deeper insight about how coaching services create value for entrepreneurs by revealing explanatory dimensions at two levels of analysis and theorizing the interrelationship between entrepreneurial learning, gender and venture development.

Future Entrepreneurs

This chapter presents the multi-dimensional approach to the teaching of entrepreneurship at Birkbeck, University of London in the UK. It is approached by presenting the curricular and extra-curricular programmes as a series of juxtaposed paradigms. The term “paradigm” is here used as conceptualising ways of thinking about the entrepreneurial learning experience, from the perspective of the content of the programmes and how the students learn. Birkbeck students' learning experience includes academic modules as well as hybrid modules which combine theory and hands-on practice.

Assessing the Entrepreneurial University from the Students' Perspective

Becoming an entrepreneurial university is one of the core objectives of the EU-OECD HEInnovate tool. This objective was also the catalyst for implementing HEInnovate within the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Aveiro (UAVR), Portugal. This chapter explores the findings from a study that applied a mixed-methods approach to assessing the entrepreneurial and innovative vision of UAVR's students from different academic years and courses. Findings demonstrate students' high level of interest in innovation and entrepreneurship and highlight the importance they placed on entrepreneurial learning and teaching. Entrepreneurial learning and teaching were found to be especially important for creating collaborative networks between different people and scientific domains, both within and outside of the university.

Economic Development and Growth Perspectives in Entrepreneurship

In developing countries, entrepreneurship is seen as a phenomenon related to the growth of the economy. Innovative start-ups feed the country's economy and contribute to reducing unemployment. The aim is to identify the voids to understand how entrepreneurs can better serve their country. Therefore, the authors evaluated the concepts of how entrepreneurs can effectively serve developing economies. The role of entrepreneurial factors such as entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial eco-systems in creating entrepreneurial intention is discussed along with the implementation of entrepreneurial learning in multiple disciplines to help reduce innovative obstacles.

Interdisciplinary Training and Mentoring for Cyber Security in Companies

Cyber security is interdisciplinary, and it is to expect that security professionals and other employees working with computers to have suitable knowledge. In this chapter an interdisciplinary training program in cyber security curriculum and an interdisciplinary mentoring program to be included in entrepreneurial learning will be proposed. It helps to produce synergy in groups and generates ideas to solve complex problems. Entrepreneurial learning is a basis for education of entrepreneurs, and it should also include such interdisciplinary programs. The author explained the advantages of interdisciplinary training and mentoring programs in this context particularly in the field of cyber security. Such programs are missing both in education as well as in companies. Two examples of European projects with the participation of the author will be done to improve entrepreneurial education and training and encourage SMEs to be innovative. The programs are supported by digital learning platforms, and interdisciplinary trainers and mentors help the learners. The main method is interdisciplinary problem-based learning (IPBL).

Coopetition within the entrepreneurial ecosystem: startups’ entrepreneurial learning processes and their implications for new venture performance

Purpose This paper aims to explore coopetition within the entrepreneurial ecosystem and answer the following two fundamental questions: How does coopetition affect the entrepreneurial learning and performance of startups? and What learning strategies should startups adopt to promote their growth in the coopetition activities? Design/methodology/approach Using the structural equation model and instrumental variable, this study used a sample of 371 startups to test the hypotheses. Data comes from startups in Jiangsu, Shanghai and Zhejiang, China. Findings This study finds that the coopetition-performance relationship of startups is marginally negative. This study also finds that exploitative learning and exploratory learning positively mediate this relationship. Ecosystem’s social capital can enhance the coopetition-exploration relationship, but the coopetition-exploitation relationship is not affected. Originality/value Many studies propose that the coopetition-performance relationship is ambiguous, which makes it meaningful to explore startups individually. Based on the resource-based view and the knowledge-based view, this study deepen the works of Bouncken and Fredrich (2016c), that is, how startups can learn and grow through coopetition activities. This study proposes that coopetition is one of the foundations of the ecosystem and explore the coopetition-performance relationship in this special context. Thus, the present paper adds to the budding literature on the effects of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and to the literature on coopetition.

Abduction and entrepreneurial learning

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to describe the similarities between abductive reasoning and entrepreneurial learning processes in order to contribute to the conceptual understanding of learning as an entrepreneurial process in itself.Design/methodology/approachThe research is theoretically rooted in a conceptual development of the understanding of entrepreneurial learning processes as abductive reasoning inspired by the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. The theoretical explication of the connection between entrepreneurial learning processes and abductive reasoning is additionally illustrated by a hypotheses-based didactic model, developed by the authors to scaffold abducting reasoning into learning processes.FindingsThe authors found in the theoretical investigation of abductive reasoning a conceptualisation of entrepreneurial learning processes that connects entrepreneurial learning processes to basic cognitive human competences, and the authors found that key concepts in entrepreneurship, such as hunches and experiments, can be understood in a broader philosophical framework as basic cognitive competences.Practical implicationsThe authors exemplify how abductive reasoning can be used in practice through a hypothesis-based didactic approach designed as a loop model.Originality/valueThe authors have discovered that abduction is closely related to entrepreneurship and can be a central conceptual link in understanding the relationship between entrepreneurship and learning. The athors also believe that Peirce's concept of abduction can contribute to the philosophical understanding of entrepreneurship as another name for a constant rethinking of the world.