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Highlights • COVID-19 emergency forced the Italian Universities to reorganize teaching in entrepreneurship education. • Digital technologies can support the development of entrepreneurial mindset. • Building an entrepreneurship education curriculum through distance learning technologies is critical. • Digital technologies can enhance successfully education ‘about’ entrepreneurship. • Digital technologies present some critical issue when used in educating students ‘for’ entrepreneurship. • CLab@Salento offered a favourable environment to experiment the use of digital tools for the creation of entrepreneurial mindset using a blended learning approach., The COVID-19 crisis has forced universities worldwide to seek urgent solutions to reconfigure traditional education programs for distance learning. The transformation process faces a number of complexities deriving from both institutional and contextual factors. It may generate threats and as well as opportunities to enhance the education system and prepare for potential future emergencies. In this article, we adopted a combined research approach to describe the experience of the Contamination Lab of the University of Salento (CLab@Salento), an entrepreneurship education program focused on innovative and technology-based entrepreneurship for university students. Moving from the analysis of the main challenges the pandemic generated for the institution, students and faculty, we illustrate the process of redesigning the entrepreneurial learning program by leveraging digital technologies. We show a new approach to entrepreneurial storytelling, pitching and business planning and development through digital technologies. We also report the outcomes of a student survey to highlight the strengths of the redesigned program and some weaknesses, especially associated with digital technologies’ limitations in education, which represent areas for future improvement. The study contributes at theory level with a new discussion on digital-supported entrepreneurship education. At practitioner level, it offers insights on redesigning traditional university programs to effectively address emergencies.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review and critique the knowledge management (KM) literature within Entrepreneurial universities, providing an overview of the state of research and outlining a future research agenda. Design/methodology/approach In a systematic literature review, 1106 articles indexed at Scopus were initially submitted to a bibliometric analysis. Finally, 150 papers published in a variety of academic journals specializing in the field of Entrepreneurship, KM and Higher Education were analyzed through a content and a bibliometric analysis to minimize mistakes in interpreting findings of collected studies. Findings KM within entrepreneurial university is a research area of growing importance. Findings show that literature on KM models and tools in the entrepreneurial university is fragmented and dominated by unrelated research. Content analysis shows heterogeneous literature, but four major research streams emerge: knowledge transfer in university–industry collaboration; knowledge creation in entrepreneurship education; KM processes for university spin-offs; entrepreneurial university to support knowledge-based regional development. The results show a failure to address the implications of findings for policy makers, which risks making KM in entrepreneurial universities research irrelevant. Research limitations/implications Although different structured literature reviews (SLRs) exist separately in the field of KM and entrepreneurial universities, to the authors’ best knowledge, no studies exist in the intersection between the two fields. Originality/value The paper presents the first attempt to provide a comprehensive SLR of the articles dealing with models and processes of KM in the entrepreneurial university. Despite the increasing literature, this research area is still fragmented and undertheorized, thus requiring more systematic and holistic studies, considering both the economic and the social aspects of KM within universities. The paper’s findings can offer insights into future research avenues.

The objective of this paper is to present the results of a desk and field explorative analysis aimed to provide insights and models for realizing entrepreneurial skills curriculum in all cycles of a pre-university education system, and also in higher education schools in a developing country context, such as Albania. In doing this, the authors focus on comparing a US model of content entrepreneurship with entrepreneurial competence in the official curriculum of Albanian Education. In this sense, this paper is a support to the development of entrepreneurship competence and tourism development, as an integrated way in the implemented curriculum, especially for the pupils of pre-university education in Albania.

Purpose The aim of this paper is underline how the new emerging digital technologies could be of great value in expanding the opportunities for women entrepreneurship by supporting them in overcoming the constrains they face as well as in creating more favorable network environment. This is creating the conditions for a new phenomenon called Digital Women Entrepreneurship. Methodology A qualitative literature review in relation to women entrepreneurship activities and the emergence of digital technologies is performed. Findings Specifically the contribution and the impact provided by the Digital Technologies will be analyzed for women entrepreneurship. A holistic interpretative framework for analyzing Digital Women Entrepreneurship is proposed. A conceptual discussion on how the Digital Technologies opportunities could be valuable in overcoming some of the constrains women tackle in their entrepreneurship process and which are the main research streams that emerge for future investigation on the theme. Originality/value Even if the literature on Women Entrepreneurship is well covered, to our best knowledge the intersection between the two fields remains unexplored. The paper provides a contribution in this direction, identifying new trends and future directions for research. Practical implications The major implication is to advance knowledge and practice in the area of gender in management and use of Digital Technologies by focusing upon empirical research, theoretical developments, practice and current issues. Benefits are related to a better understanding of the debate on “Gender and Management” themes by reconsidering networking activities with social media.

It is widely recognized that entrepreneurs are key drivers of economic development, and as such, nurturing an entrepreneurial mindset in young people has become a key priority for innovation. Entrepreneurship education (EE) has emerged as a key instrument to enhance entrepreneurial orientation. A growing number of curricula and programs devoted to entrepreneurship are registered in all levels and fields of education. Likewise, the tourism education sector recently has started to offer entrepreneurship education through dedicated modules or courses. However, despite the growing attention and relevance of EE in tourism, to our best knowledge, this field of research remains under-investigated. This paper aims to contribute to closing this gap by analyzing, though a web-based content analysis, the situation of European university initiatives that have begun including modules and contents related to entrepreneurship in their tourism educational programs. In particular, the paper seeks to analyse how the main components related to EE are being structured in these tourism education programs and offer advice on what might constitute an effective tourism entrepreneurship education path.

The pivotal role of Entrepreneurship centers in the development of Entrepreneurship Education (EE) is receiving more attention. This study aims to open the &ldquo, black box&rdquo, of &ldquo, how, when, why and what&rdquo, entrepreneurial mindset and competencies in the field of technology entrepreneurship are learned over time in the Entrepreneurship Centers. The study adopts an empirical web-based content analysis of ten entrepreneurship centers in European Universities from seven countries, analyzing 105 curricular and extra-curricular entrepreneurship education programs. This method allows researchers to address generalization bias and to effectuate a cross-case comparison, thus revealing more common patterns regarding the phenomenon. Findings reveal some common pillars of EE as developed within the Entrepreneurship centers in terms of five key dimensions: target audience, learning objectives, entrepreneurship contents, learning pedagogies and stakeholders&rsquo, engagement. This analysis provides the basis to introduce a process-based framework for entrepreneurial mindset creation in EE that is organized around four main phases: inspiration, engagement, exploitation and sustainment. The process-based model of EE supports entrepreneurship centers in designing learning initiatives that are aimed to inspire students at all levels of education, young entrepreneurs and start-uppers and scientists in their need to be equipped with an entrepreneurial mindset for technology entrepreneurship. The originality of the paper stands on the &ldquo, process-based&rdquo, framework that is proposed that serves as an interactive pathway that dynamically combines the phases toward entrepreneurial venture creation, the entrepreneurial competence level, the entrepreneurial learning strategies and collaboration with the University&rsquo, s stakeholders&rsquo, network toward the achievement of the competence goal.

Creating an entrepreneurial mindset among the members of a society (public sector, private sectors, academia, etc.) is seen as a critical process in coping with uncertainty and complexity, but also as a mechanism for creating and thriving on these (Gibb 2005). This scenario translates into a need to equip individuals not only with an entrepreneurial mindset but also with the capability to design organisations of all kinds—public, private and NGO—to support effective entrepreneurial behaviour (Gibb 2005). Students at all levels of education, young entrepreneurs and those starting up businesses need to be equipped with an entrepreneurial mindset, defined by five constituent elements: (1) the capacity to think creatively, strategically, analytically and reflectively; (2) confidence in one’s abilities; (3) the ability to collaborate; (4) well-developed communication skills; and (5) an understanding of the current business context (Pollard and Wilson 2014).

On the basis of a synthetic review of the literature about the Living Labs phenomenon, the article investigates to what extent the theoretical approach finds a coherent application in the reality. Focusing on 15 Italian living labs associated to the ENoLL, the study addresses a comparative analysis based on a set of features extracted from the literature. In providing a significant overview of the Italian experience in terms of Living Labs, the study focuses on their implications for the development of entrepreneurial competencies by leveraging on user centrality and public-private networking. Starting from this analysis, the case of VINCENTE Living Lab is presented, by highlighting the technology entrepreneurship dimension that represents the core process for the intelligent growth in the knowledge economy scenarios.