Entrepreneurship is one of those things that people often think you either have or you don’t.  It’s not something you can learn in a classroom but that’s forged in the marketplace.

A few years ago I covered a study that examined this in more detail.  It suggests that it is very much a skill that can be learned, with the ability to think in an entrepreneurial way something that exists within most of us, even if we don’t know it.  It suggests that action orientated training can help to unlock this potential and unleash the entrepreneur in us all.

An alternative perspective is given by a second study, which suggests that there is not really any difference between experience based learning or class based learning.

The analysis looked at traditional courses and compared them to those who focus more on learning by doing.  The study aimed to explore whether the trend towards experiential learning in entrepreneurship had merit or not.

“Entrepreneurship education is seen as a major force capable of generating long-term socio-economic changes through developing entrepreneurial, creative, flexible and wise individuals. There is an ongoing shift towards experiential learning in business schools, yet there is little empirical evidence to suggest this approach has better impact than traditional learning,” the author says.

Barriers to entrepreneurship

Perhaps before you even get to this point, however, it’s important that people understand the various barriers they may face, and how those barriers may be overcome.

That’s the finding of a new study by Penn State, which examined the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education.  The study explored not only the kind of skills taught in such courses, but also examined the intentions of students to actually start a business and their perceptions of any barriers they may face in doing so.

“There are a lot of studies in the literature that focus on, for example, how entrepreneurship education influences the students’ competence in starting a business,” the researchers say. “But, our model does not look at it from one perspective. We look at it from three perspectives—competencies, intentions and barriers. What we found was that entrepreneurship education helps to increase the students’ skills. If those skills help to reduce the barriers, then it increases their intentions to start a business.”

Starting up

While many entrepreneurship education programs provide students with a range of skills required to create a business, whether financial, marketing, or IP related, it’s by no means guaranteed that it will result in the student actually creating  business.

“There are a lot of reasons why people don’t want to become entrepreneurs, but one of those reasons is that they see barriers,” the researchers explain. “Maybe they’re not sure on how to start a business, maybe they’re worried it will take too much time, maybe they think they don’t know the domain well enough—there are a lot of issues.”

The researchers believe that entrepreneurship education can be constructed in such a way as to not only provide invaluable entrepreneurship skills but also to directly address these barriers to help ensure that students create businesses at the end of the course.

Overcoming barriers

For instance, the legal process of establishing a business can be daunting for the initiated, so the researchers propose incorporating that into the lessons so that students are walked through the process of researching company names and going through the various steps involved in registering a business.  It’s a simple process but one that assuages a key concern students have.

They believe it’s vital that students are better equipped to create new businesses, as entrepreneurialism is so important to the economy.

“There is a real strong connection between well-being of people, economic growth and entrepreneurial activity,” they conclude. “Entrepreneurial activity is how we grow the economy—not just in the U.S., but globally. A lot of people might think of entrepreneurism as just a money-making activity, but it’s actually about growing the entire pie for everyone.”