Blog

  • Empowering students to tackle complex problems

    Empowering students to tackle complex problems

    By Tina Larsen

    Engage wants to empower students to apply the Design Thinking methodology to solve complex problems that occur around them. We have therefore hired Designhjelpen to develop, facilitate and test a course in Design Thinking for students working with curricular projects. The course is part of a larger project with the purpose of motivating and enabling students to take project ideas further.

    Designhjelpen is a student advisory service from industrial design at NTNU and are part of the innovation ecosystem at the university. They carry out small and large design assignments, such as assignments and workshops in graphic design, product design, interaction design, service design and concept development. The student group consists of about 20 students.

    What is Design Thinking and why is it important?

    Design Thinking is a non-linear, iterative process used to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. It is about solving real problems for real users. It includes methods and mindsets that together contribute to innovative solutions that meet user needs, are technologically possible and commercially viable. The Design Thinking methodology is useful in tackling complex problems that are ill-defined and unknown.

    Design thinking can be a contribution both to create a better dynamic in the student groups and in the development process of the project. We believe this course can create a better and more open environment where everyone in the group contributes. They will also learn to have a user-oriented focus and to prototype and test their solutions.

    Kristine Hoff, Designhjelpen

    The Design Thinking course

    In the first instance, Designhjelpen will test the Design Thinking course in two different Experts in Teamwork villages at NTNU. Experts in Teamwork (EiT) is a master’s degree course in which students develop their interdisciplinary teamwork skills. The course is compulsory for all students in master’s programmes and programmes of professional study at NTNU. This year, due to Covid-19, the course is held on digital platforms.

    On the 15th of January, Designhjelpen held their first course in Design Thinking and a collaborative workshop for the students. They first held a presentation where they briefly explained what Design Thinking is and went through the five stages in the Design Thinking process. These are:

    1. Empathize
    2. Define (the problem)
    3. Ideate
    4. Prototype
    5. Test

    After the presentation, they allowed the students to use theory in practice where they applied the method in a digital collaboration tool. The course received positive feedback and the students seemed to get a practical benefit from the workshop.

    Future prospects

    As mentioned, the Design Thinking course is part of a larger project with the purpose of motivating and enabling students to take project ideas further. The goal of the project is to develop a toolbox, an innovation package, where the Design Thinking course is one of five separate measures.

    Students come up with good ideas that can benefit society. We want to motivate them to take the idea further after the project-based course has ended. By combining the five measures, we hope to achieve the goals of both motivating and enabling them to continue with their ideas.

    Ida Fuchs, Innovation manager at NTNU

    The development of the innovation package will take place in several rounds, and the first iteration will be held in the two Experts in Teamwork villages. The initiators behind the innovation package are currently working on a project description to get support for further development and testing of the toolbox in other courses among the various Engage partners. The goal is for the innovation package to be usable in several topics where students work in teams on a project. We are excited to follow the development of the project.

    The toolbox consists of:

    1. Introduction lecture about the innovation ecosystem at NTNU and funding opportunities
    2. Crash Course in Design Thinking by Designhjelpen
    3. Crash Course in Business Model Canvas
    4. Pitching practice in front of an expert panel
    5. Exit interview with an innovation manager at NTNU and / or a mentor from Spark* NTNU

  • Sharing Norwegian entrepreneurship practice in new international book

    Sharing Norwegian entrepreneurship practice in new international book

    By Lise Aaboen, professor, NTNU

    Engage contributes to a new book by sharing Norwegian entrepreneurship practices in three chapters highlighting the CERN Screening Week, the Blast off Week at Nord and the Venture Creation Program at NTNU.

    The new book “Innovation in Global Entrepreneurship Education: Teaching Entrepreneurship in Practice” is edited by Heidi M Neck from Babson College (US) and visiting Professor at Engage together with Yipeng Liu from University of Reading (UK) and consists of three parts: Building bridges across the university for entrepreneurship; Teaching and learning entrepreneurship; The impact of entrepreneurship education and new directions.

    Best practices

    The book illustrates the challenges faced by educators and creative methods for tackling them, offering useful insights in an international comparison. Sharing lessons and best practices enables a juxtaposing and leveraging of experiences from different parts of the world rather than a one size fits all approach.

    Engage contributes to the book by sharing Norwegian entrepreneurship practices in three chapters highlighting the CERN Screening Week, the Blast off Week at Nord and the Venture Creation Program at NTNU. During CERN Screening Week, the students carry out feasibility studies on CERN technology while the students at Blast off week solve actual challenges in collaboration with regional companies and municipalities. 

    Venture Creation Program

    The experiences shared focus on the organization of these intensive camp-like weeks in terms of how to integrate the weeks in the courses, how to collaborate with stakeholders and how to utilize previous students as facilitators in the course. The third chapter emphasize that the ventures created for learning as part of the Venture Creation Program continue to grow and provide value long after graduation.

    Contributors from Engage include: Lise Aaboen, Torgeir Aadland, Marianne  Arntzen-Nordqvist, Dag Håkon Haneberg, Karoline Kaspersen, Bjørg Riibe Ramskjell and Roger Sørheim

    You can read more about the book here

    About the book
    In the book you can read about entrepreneurship education practices at the following universities: Babson College (USA),TBS Business School (France), Ulster University (Northern Ireland), FACENS (Brazil), University of Applied Sciences (Germany), Waseda University (Japan), Almaty Management University (Kazakhstan), Universidad de Piura (Peru), Tecnologico de Monterrey (Mexico), CETYS Universidad (Mexico), The American University in Cairo (Egypt), FLAME University (India), EAE Business School (Spain), Bennett University (India), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway), EDEM School of Business (Spain), Nord University (Norway), Université Laval (Canada)

  • The first year of Spark* Chalmers

    The first year of Spark* Chalmers

    By Tina Larsen

    In December of 2019, Spark* Chalmers was initiated by the Chalmers Innovation Office and is currently run by students studying at Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship. They follow the same concept as Spark* NTNU but they had to adapt it to their own innovation ecosystem.

    “Spark* Chalmers is a student-run organization providing free mentorship to all Chalmers students that have a business idea. We help with the early stages of a business idea and therefore we fill a gap in existing offers and services.”

    Emil Krutmeijer, mentor at Spark* Chalmers

    The desire to establish Spark * Chalmers came as a need for a low threshold offer for students with business ideas. They noticed that many students have ideas with great potential but lack support in taking concrete actions. Spark * Chalmers offer free mentorship to take business ideas further where they among other thing help with idea validation, business development, marketing, sales and IP. In addition to this, they develop students’ entrepreneurial mindset and skills, introduce students to the entrepreneurial ecosystem around Gothenburg and are connecting them with different actors.

    As of today, they have mentored 30 different projects with Chalmers students from 19 different study programmes. The projects have shown great progress e.g. students have been talking to and tested their ideas with customers, are entering competitions and getting verification funding and finding complementary team members.

    “So far, Spark* has exceeded my expectations, despite being newly launched. My project has advanced very quickly, efficiently, and with a goal-orientated approach – much thanks to needed motivation from my mentor”

    Spark* Chalmers mentee

    As well as mentoring, Spark* Chalmers also host inspirational events and courses, often in collaboration with their partners. They hope to inspire students to pursue their ideas and they will guide them to take it further.

    Spark* Chalmers are dependent on sponsors and donors to keep the mentorship program free. Please visit their homepage for more information on how you can contribute.

    Spark* Chalmers’ partners

  • Five more years for Engage

    Five more years for Engage

    By Tina Larsen

    “Our panel’s review… led us to the conclusion that Engage has become a world-leading centre for entrepreneurship education.”

    Review comitee

    You can read the Diku committee report here.

    The centre has been a Center of Excellence in Education since 2017 and our vision is to develop learning initiatives in higher education to increase the number of students with entrepreneurial skills and mindset to become change agents for the better. This is in line with recent societal developments – we need to develop and change our society to be more sustainable and adaptable to changes.

    Change can, generally speaking, be done through top-down or bottom-up initiatives. Engage wants to contribute to make the latter possible – we want to enable people to be drivers of change. We focus on developing student’s entrepreneurial skills and mindset for them to handle changing circumstances in an uncertain world.

    “A change agent is a person who is constantly looking for or is creating opportunities, putting resources together in a new way to create value, who dares to deal with uncertainty and risk, and who takes action.” 

    Øystein Widding, Centre Director at Engage

    The first period of Engage Centre

    Over the last years, Engage has initiated a number of projects at the student, educator and research level, both within and outside the centre. Overall, Engage has launched nearly 300 learning initiatives, development and dissemination activities to various audiences in different contexts. Everything revolves around Engage’s educational framework. The framework has five elements that are considered key in developing and enforcing students’ entrepreneurial skills and mindset. These five key elements can be used in any field or tradition at the higher education level, but they are not a “one-size-fits-all” and need to be adapted. 

    “We try to make our students act to solve issues through practice or real experiments, interact with other students or external stakeholders, challenge the world outside the university, embrace uncertainty instead of shying away from it, and reflect to create personal sense-making and transform raw experiences into internalized knowledge.”

    Erik Medbø, innovation leader at NTNU and leader of Train-the-trainer at Engage

    When the corona pandemic led to lock-down measures, we had to think differently in terms of communicating our knowledge. We therefore started Engage Talk which is a digital series in the field of entrepreneurship where we highlight current topics that can be useful for professionals, experts and businesses. Engage Talk is led by Nord University Business School, one of Engage’s partners. 

    The most valuable experience from the first period was the need to focus the effort on three main areas – engaging students, educators and research. In addition to this, Engage includes sustainable aspects into these areas. 

    “Our panel’s unanimous evaluation is that Engage has achieved the stated goals for its first five years…”

    Review comitee

    Engaging students

    Engaging students is of primary importance for Engage. Through this focus area, the centre establishes and develops learning initiatives utilising the educational framework. Engage wants to enable students to increase their entrepreneurial skills and mindset. This is done by facilitating and offering activities, sharing of knowledge and learnings, letting students have ownership of the activity and experience uncertainty.

    For example, Engage is involved in the establishment of a center with a collection of several student initiatives under the same roof. This supports the culture of sharing. One of these student initiatives are Spark* NTNU, the student-to-student mentoring program. They are one of Engage’s partners and the centre has contributed to expanding the concept-model to other universities, such as Spark* Nord, and has plans to expand further in the next period. You can read more about the project here.

    Engage has also been involved in developing new courses. As an effect of the increased layoffs during the corona pandemic, the centre developed an online course in entrepreneurship and business development for laid-off and partially laid-off workers. Experiences from participants of the course is that it has been useful and that it has created new opportunities. Another course the centre has developed is the entrepreneurial course for PhD students. The aim of the course is to develop the entrepreneurial mindset of PhD students to increase their engagement with practitioners, and create knowledge transfer from their research projects. At Engage we also have developed a sustainability course where the students learn and practice sustainability and entrepreneurship through interdisciplinary teams. In addition to this, they have “The Blast of the Week” where students in Master of Science in Business work together on cases. The course has a focus on experience-based learning.

    Engaging Educators

    To gain momentum and broaden the scope of the centre, there is also a need to engage and involve educators in different disciplines. Therefore, Engage’s second focus area is enabling educators in increasing their students’ entrepreneurial skills and mindset. This is done through collaboration, development and knowledge sharing on learning initiatives applicable in a broad range of higher education contexts and disciplines. This too is a result of best practice within the Engage Partners TrollLabs, EiT, NTNU School of Entrepreneurship, Nord University Business School and Spark*NTNU.

    The educational framework mentioned above is used in Engage’s biggest initiative – Train-the-trainer. The aim of this project is to give other educators the opportunity to use Engage’s pedagogical tools in their disciplines. In the next period Engage will develop “Engage Academy” which aims to professionalize the activity we are doing aimed at educators today.

    “It will be important to scale up our business. We can engage in one-on-one dialogue with educators, but it is important that we also manage to scale it up so that we can have a bigger impact. That will be our priority in the next period.”

    Øystein Widding, Centre Director at Engage

    Engaging Research

    Engage also puts great effort into researching how to integrate experience-based entrepreneurship education into various disciplines. Engaging research is therefore Engage’s third focus area. Currently, Engage has about 15 ongoing research projects – all of which contribute to new insight regarding key themes of entrepreneurial learning, student engagement and development of entrepreneurial skills and mindsets.

    In collaboration with ECSB – European Council for small Business and Entrepreneurship we have started EE Explore which is a virtual platform for research interaction globally about Entrepreneurship Education. It is a way to start a debate on the pedagogical framework we advocate and the activity we are doing. This brings us great impact.

    The future of Engage

    In the next period of the Engage Centre these focus areas will be continued and strengthened. The educational framework will be important for the centre; testing it, improving it, and dimmeniating it. Based on this, we believe Engage will be able to become a significant resource for higher education.

    “Engage is a role model for other current and future centres of excellence in Norway and around the world which seek to blend teaching, research, and practice, and through a multi-disciplinary set of stakeholders across faculty, students, staff, industry, and other partners”

    Review comitee

    Engage Organization

    Engage is a consortium consisting of:

    • The NTNU School of Entrepreneurship
    • Nord University Business School
    • NTNU Experts in Teamwork
    • TrollLABS
    • Spark* NTNU

  • Five key elements of Entrepreneurship Education – Engage’s Educational Framework

    Five key elements of Entrepreneurship Education – Engage’s Educational Framework

    By Eirik Gjelsvik Medbø, Innovation Manager, NTNU

    Engage seeks to “Develop higher education to increase the number of students in Norway and around the world with entrepreneurial skills and mindset to become change agents and innovate for the better”. Our intention is to enhance the likelihood that students will identify and capture the right opportunity at the right time for the right reason, even in uncertain and unpredictable conditions. This requires an educational approach that goes beyond understanding and verbalising, it requires using, applying, and acting – it requires practice. But what sort of practice, and how can we introduce that into our educational activities?

    As educators, we each have our own settings for teaching, we teach differently, and we have student groups with different needs and prior knowledge. In other words, educational activities are not necessarily directly transferrable between different educators, so we should constantly work to develop our own ways of teaching. When we at Engage work to develop our educational activities, we try to let our students learn through five elements:

    Engage’s Educational Framework

    • Act – Engage with doing
    • Interact – Engage with others, partners or stakeholders
    • Challenge – Engage with the world outside the university
    • Embrace – Engage with and handle uncertainty
    • Reflect – Engage with internalising knowledge and skills

    In other words, we try to make our students act to solve issues through practice or real experiments, interact with other students or external stakeholders, challenge the “real-world” outside the university, embrace uncertainty instead of shying away from it, and reflect to create personal sense-making and transform raw experiences into internalised knowledge.

    These elements are not a “one-size-fits-all”, we rather use them as a reminder of practices that are important to develop Entrepreneurial Skills and Mindset.

    These elements are not a “one-size-fits-all”, where any educational activity needs to touch all elements. We rather use them as a reminder of practices that are important to develop Entrepreneurial Skills and Mindset. We ask ourselves; do my students get to practice on these elements over the course of their studies? Which aspects within their education do they struggle with, where they might need more practice throughout their education? As these five elements are probably not self-explanatory, we will dive deeper into each element. 

    The five practices – Explained

    Act refers to the practice of experimenting, iterating or hypothesis testing – the practice of using action as a way to approach uncertainty: If you don’t know what to do or how to find a solution, you could in many cases do an experiment to see whether it works, rather than getting stuck in “analysis paralysis”. This will be done in different ways in different disciplines, but some examples of action could be rapid prototyping, creating minimum viable products, doing simulations, focus groups or simple experiments. Students who learn through acting, would also learn to accept failure as a learning step, and the value of simplifying complex problems to make them testable.

    Interact is the practice of involving and learning from others, throughout a problem-solving process. Complex and uncertain problems often require a variety of different types of knowledge, and innovative ideas need validation and feedback. This practice involves both discussing and hypothesising between students within a class or project team, as well as learning from experts, users, professors or other stakeholders outside the project team. An important aspect of entrepreneurship is to be able to mobilise other stakeholders as well as resources, and activities involving interaction is a way to let students practice this.

    Challenge is the practice of having students work on real problems, from outside the university – problems that aren’t simplified or tailor-made. Real problems are often complex and uncertain, and students may be more motivated and enthusiastic about trying to solve them. These challenges may be introduced in a number of ways; challenges introduced by external businesses, organisations, practitioners or users, challenges in relevant research projects, self-observed issues that students want to solve, issues related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals etc. Learning through real challenges give students the chance to practice their future professional skills, and relate them to theoretical concepts they learn at the university – a challenge they will all face when they graduate. 

    Learning through challenges from outside the university gives students the chance to practice their future professional skills, and relate them to theoretical concepts they learn at the university

    Reflection is how we enable our students to internalise and abstract the learning they acquire through learning activities. This is a great way to connect experiences with domain-specific knowledge and to link experiences to theory, which is especially important in entrepreneurship education, and it enables students to apply that knowledge and skillset to future experiences. To engage students’ reflection, we make them consider the experiences they’ve had and ask them to understand or explain it. Reflection could be done individually, within a team or group, or through class discussion with the educator. This requires conscious attention from the educator as to what theories that the learning could be linked to, what questions we ask from them, and that we have time and a setting that allows for students to form their own reflections.

    Click here to read more about how to incorporate reflection into your educational activities: https://engage-centre.no/reflection-as-a-practice-in-entrepreneurship-education/

    Embrace refers to the practice of trying to tackle uncertainties, by actively investigating them and trying to find good answers. Entrepreneurship as a practice involves large amounts of uncertainty at many levels. To handle them, we require training to be able to find the uncertainties to prioritize, and striking the balance between avoiding some potential problems and working to solve others. We need to consciously evaluate what amount and form of uncertainty our students are able to handle – inexperienced students might need small and manageable levels, while more experienced students could handle a lot. Great change agents are able to structure and manage uncertainties – and use action, interaction, challenge and reflection to solve them.

  • Educating Entrepreneurial Researchers

    Educating Entrepreneurial Researchers

    How can you as a researcher work to create impact from your research? The course “Research-based Innovation” aims to develop the entrepreneurial mindset of PhD students to increase their engagement with practitioners, and create knowledge transfer from their research projects.

    By Tina Larsen

    The course was developed by Engage after the Faculty of Electronics and Computer Sciences at NTNU conducted a project with the aim to form the future PhD education at the faculty. The faculty discovered the need to focus PhD courses on broader personal and professional development topics, like ethics, communication, didactics – and innovation & entrepreneurship. The motivation for working with innovation & entrepreneurship is partly to improve collaboration with partners in research projects, but also that innovation, or impact, has evolved as a key priority for many research funding schemes.

    We see that both the EU Horizon programmes, as well as programmes from the Research Council of Norway demand that researchers focus on the impact of their research and their contribution to society. I think this is a healthy development, and I see no signs that this focus will stop anytime soon.

    Eirik Medbø, Innovation Manager at Engage

    The first pilot of the course

    Medbø worked with Professors Øystein Widding and Roger Sørheim to develop the first pilots of the course. The first pilot course were held in the summer of 2020. The aim of the course is to develop an understanding of the link between research and business, and some steps to facilitate transfer of knowledge between researchers and practitioners. This is important for the PhD graduates in order to contribute in their future careers.

    As a PhD graduate, you will be instrumental in developing future research projects. If you continue in academia, you’ll work with new projects in collaboration with industry or public sector. If you start working in the industry or public sector, you’ll often become a champion for research within your company or organization – your employer will expect you to help them put new research results into practice.

    Eirik Medbø, Innovation Manager at Engage

    Current PhD programmes often include various courses on fundamental theoretical pillars within their fields, different research methods and tools or instruments. Many of these courses are “self-study” courses, including reading lists and written deliverables. The course “IØ8906 – Research-based Innovation” on the other hand, demands active participation from students. It challenges by focusing on the output of their research projects, encourages them to take actions, while at the same time reflecting on their passion and ambitions as a researcher.

    Important aspects

    The course focuses on two important aspects that are often overlooked in current PhD programmes: working with getting to know and understanding partners, users or customers, and communicating potential value of research results to managers, decision makers, investors and policy makers. The course ends with a pitching exercise, where PhD students are challenged to pitch their research, while focusing on business aspects of their research.

    Still, I think the most important aspect of the course is that we give our students time to reflect on some fundamental questions, like “Why am I passionate about research?”, “How does my research contribute to society?” and “How would I like my results to be used?”

    Eirik Medbø, Innovation Manager at Engage

    A smaller subset of the course has also been used as a training course for PhD’s internationally in the ERASMUS+ project “Training the MindSET”, with researchers in Berlin, Warsaw and Milan. The goal of the ERASMUS+ project is to develop cross-disciplinary educational content for PhD courses all over Europe.

    Learning outcomes

    So, what about the students’ learning outcomes from the course? Students who have completed the course highlight the benefit of learning to communicate with leaders, business managers and decision makers, and have already recommended the course to their peers. In the “Feasibility Study”, which is the final delivery, students describe how they would work to develop their results into for instance new businesses, technology licenses, new research projects or new industry norms on ethical service design. As one student put it at the end of a course: “The way the course forced us to view our research in a different way was very meaningful.”

    Engage aims to further develop the course to be included in the degree for technical PhD students at NTNU, and the long-term vision is to establish the course as a mandatory cross-discipline course for all PhD students – an Entrepreneurial Mindset should be a prerequisite for becoming a great researcher.

    IØ8906 – Research-based Innovation

    Contents of the course «Research-based Innovation»:

    • Entrepreneurship from a researcher context: Cornerstones of theoretical perspectives
    • Universities’ contribution to society through technology transfer – history and current trends
    • Knowledge transfer – channels and actions
    • Student reflections: How could I realize innovation from my own research?
    • Design Thinking and empathising with users and customers
    • Intellectual Property (IP) and IP Rights – strategic uses within research and innovation
    • Pitching – how to develop a pitch, what to say and how to engage an audience
    • Business Models – how to create, deliver and capture value
    • Panel Pitching: Every student pitch innovations from THEIR research

    Written deliveries:

    • Feasibility Study – how could you work entrepreneurially to realize innovation from YOUR research?
    • Reflection Note – Students’ reflections on the course and innovation from research

  • Previous Online Events – Pedagogical Interventions in Entrepreneurship Education

    Previous Online Events – Pedagogical Interventions in Entrepreneurship Education

    3rd of December at 10 AM to 11 AM (CET)

    You have to be a member of ECSB to follow this event. If you do not have a valid membership, click here to become a member, click here to participate to the event.

    This event is hosted online.

    There is growing acknowledgement that educational systems and methods need to move from traditional to more creative, interactive and student-centred educational models in order to change students’ mindset so they may excel in highly dynamic and uncertain environments. Yet, the issue of the most effective pedagogical method to encourage the development of an entrepreneurial mindset is an area that raises regular discussion and debate, as well as calls for further exploration. In this event we will be exploring different types of pedagogical interventions that can be used to enhance students’ entrepreneurial mindset.

    As moderators for the event we have the pleasure of presenting Associate professor Karen Williams Middleton and Senior Lecturer Gustav Hägg.

    Karen Williams Middleton
    Karen Williams Middleton is an Associate Professor in Entrepreneurship at the division of Entrepreneurship and Strategy at Chalmers University of Technology. Her research interests include nascent entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial identity and behavior, entrepreneurial learning and education and university entrepreneurship. She has been in the Faculty at Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship since 2004. Her research has been published in, for example International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Industry & Higher Education, International Journal of Management Education and International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management among others.

    Gustav Hägg
    Gustav Hägg is a Postdoctoral researcher at Sten K. Johnson Centre For Entrepreneurship, Lund University and Assistant Professor at Malmö University with a PhD in the research field of entrepreneurial education focused on how reflective thinking could become more integrated in the learning process of students’ entrepreneurs. His current research interests include theorizing learning in entrepreneurial education and career outcomes of graduate entrepreneurs through alumni research. He has also a general interest for entrepreneurial decision-making and the role of ethics in relation to entrepreneurship, more specifically to digitalization and the gig-economy.

    Paper: Addressing entrepreneurial uncertainty through simulation – evaluation of an experiential entrepreneurship education approach
    Annabelle Beyer, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany
    Co-author: Uta Wilkens, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

    Paper: Supporting Entrepreneurship Students’ Sense of Belonging in Online Virtual Spaces
    Renata Osowska and Jacqueline Brodie, Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland.

    Paper: The visualization of an idea: How to design a crowdfunding video in entrepreneurship education
    Christian Greiner and Tom Peisl, HM Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences, Germany.

    This is the second in a series of event that Engage – Centre for Engaged Education through Entrepreneurship together with ECSB has launched online.

  • Opportunity evaluation in the context of sustainable entrepreneurship

    Opportunity evaluation in the context of sustainable entrepreneurship

    By Tina Larsen

    The world is facing major societal challenges related to climate change and the way we as a society are structured and live today cannot continue. Sustainability has therefore emerged as a concept and sustainable development is perhaps the most prominent topic of our time. In the following, the concept of sustainable entrepreneurship will be discussed.

    Sustainable entrepreneurship

    Erik O’Donnell is a Ph.D. candidate at Engage and “Opportunity evaluation in the context of sustainable entrepreneurship” is the title of his research project. The purpose of the thesis is to understand the relationship between knowledge, skills and attitudes and opportunity evaluation. For example, how does someone’s knowledge, skills and attitudes affect the opportunities they pursue in the context of sustainable entrepreneurship?

    “I think entrepreneurs must know something about sustainability to be able to discover opportunities that, when exploited, will lead to an actual sustainable impact.”

    Erik O’Donnell, Ph.D candidate

    Entrepreneurship is about identifying business opportunities and realizing these opportunities to create and capture value. In the emerging research field of sustainable entrepreneurship there is a discussion whether entrepreneurial knowledge and economic motivation are insufficient for recognizing sustainable development opportunities.

    Erik O’Donnels’s view is that it is hard to reason about the social and ecological impacts of a perceived opportunity. “I ask what kind of knowledge, skills and attitudes entrepreneurs need to understand the social and ecological aspects of a business opportunity”, he says. There is a distinction between actual sustainable impact and what just seems like it. O’Donnell believes you need to have an understanding of sustainability to be able to make a distinction between alternatives and to what extent they are actually sustainable.

    What kind of knowledge, skills and attitudes do entrepreneurs need?

    As of today, there is little or limited knowledge about sustainability in for example entrepreneurship education. Over the past decade, the number of sustainability programs in higher education has grown significantly, but for many the curriculum about sustainability comes too late or never in the course of study.

    Through studies there has been highlighted key competencies in sustainability. Systems-thinking competency is one of these key competencies. Systems-thinking competency is “the ability to collectively analyze complex systems across different domains (society, environment, economy, etc.) and across different scales (local to global), thereby considering cascading effects, inertia, feedback loops and other systemic features related to sustainability issues and sustainability problem-solving frameworks” (Wiek et al., 2011). This means that systems-thinking is considered a crucial competency in sustainability.

    Since systems-thinking competency is identified as crucial for understanding sustainability, O’Donnell asks whether systems-thinking competency is crucial for entrepreneurs if they are to understand the social and ecological aspects of a business opportunity. He will try to answer this question through his research project. There is still no consensus in the field of research for what entrepreneurs need to know about sustainability. Still, O’Donnell believes systems-thinking competency is important.

    “I believe being a good systems-thinker can give huge competitive advantages as an entrepreneur.”

    Erik O’Donnell, Ph.D candidate

    Sustainability in Engage

    Sustainability is also a focus area in Engage. Engage’s vision is to develop higher education to increase the number of students in Norway and around the world with entrepreneurial skills and mindset to become change agents and innovate for the better. In 2020, Engage will focus on the development of abilities that identify and exploit opportunities that alleviate the global environmental and societal challenges.

    For example, since 2016 Engage and NTNU have been part of The Journey which is the world’s largest climate innovation summer school offering transformative learning and hands-on business experience. 

    At Nord university, which is one of Engage’s partners, they offer a faculty course in sustainability. The students get to use theory of sustainability in practice and the goal of the course is to develop skills and mindset to act entrepreneurial for creating and capturing sustainable value.

    Further reading

    Brundiers et. al. (2020). Key competencies in sustainability in higher education – toward
    an agreed‑upon reference framework    .

    Patzelt, H. & Shepherd, D. A. (2011). Recognizing Opportunities for Sustainable Development.

  • EE Explore: Exploring entrepreneurship educations digitally

    EE Explore: Exploring entrepreneurship educations digitally

    By Line M. Karlsen

    Once a year ECSB arrange the 3E conference about Entrepreneurship Education, that in May 2020 was cancelled because of the COVID-19 crisis. In this site you will find information about upcoming events and how you can join them.

    Upcomming event:
    28. january: Unsettling Entrepreneurship Education!

    Previous Event
    17. desember: Storytelling
    3. desember: Pedagogical Interventions in Entrepreneurship Education


    Developing entrepreneurial mindsets through education
    The first EE Explore event was hold on the 24th of September and was based on the theme of the cancelled 3E conference in May 2020, Developing entrepreneurial mindsets through education. Four participants pitched their paper followed by a roundtable discussion – with professor Andrew Corbett and professor Jeffery McMullen as moderators. Read more about the previous event

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  • Creating new opportunities

    Creating new opportunities

    By Tina Larsen

    The online course is adapted to laid-off and partially laid-off employees. Through the online course, the participants will work with self-selected issues that are relevant to themselves and the company they are partially laid off from. They will learn how to identify new business opportunities, and how to go about doing something with these opportunities.

    Experiences from the first course

    The course was held for the first time this summer and the experiences have been great. The course had almost 300 applicants and 55 participants were picked. 60 % were women and 40 % were men, and the age range was from 24 to 65 years.

    I have been to establishment courses before, but this course was more useful and comprehensive, and not least more relevant as I am running my own business and had the opportunity to work with my own case.

    Karen Elle Lepperød, former participant

    She mentions that the course provided clear guidelines for stepping out of the comfort zone and takling to the target group. This resulted in a study that gave her lots of valuable input to further develop her company. “The course instructors were available for guidance during the project and was of great benefit”, she says.

    A new round

    As a result of the success from this summer, NTNU and Engage will now run a new round of the course. Even Haug Larsen, an assistant professor at NTNU School of Entrepreneurship, are one of the lecturers working with this project.

    What is exciting about a course like this is that people from different disciplines and with different interests and perspectives meet and find each other. They work together in groups and a lot of good can then be created. In fact, one of the groups from this summer has decided to further develop the idea they worked on.

    Even Haug Larsen, Assistant Professor NSE

    Skill-upgrading and new opportunities

    The aim of the course is to give the participants a skill-upgrading in entrepreneurship which can lead to new opportunities. For example, one of the participants who had lost his job applied for a position as a business developer. “A couple of days ago we received a message that he got the job and he believes this course was a contributing factor to that”, Larsen says. Karen Elle Lepperød also experienced that she gained new and useful knowledge

    I learned more about entrepreneurship and ways to develop a business plan. There were several considerations here that were new to me and that I became aware of during the course.

    Karen Elle Lepperød

    Skap Verdi – IØ6055

    IØ6055 is an online course in entrepreneurship and business development. The second round of the course are being held from 12th of October to 22th of December 2020. It is adapted for laid-off and partially laid-off employees where they work with self-selected issues individually or in teams.

    Read more about the course.