Search

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify entrepreneur mentor benefits and challenges as a result of entrepreneurship mentoring in higher education (HE). Design/methodology/approach: An entrepreneurship mentoring scheme was developed at a UK university to support prospective student entrepreneurs, with mentors being entrepreneurs drawn from the local business community. A mentor-outcomes framework was developed and applied to guide semi-structured interviews. Findings: Results supported the broader applicability of our framework, with a revised framework developed to better represent the entrepreneur mentor context. Alongside psychosocial and personal developmental outcomes, mentors benefitted from entrepreneurial learning, renewed commitment to their own ventures and the development of additional skills sets. Enhanced business performance also manifested itself for some mentors. A range of challenges are presented, some generic to the entrepreneur setting and others more specific to the higher education (HE) setting. Research limitations/implications: The framework offered serves as a starting point for further researchers to explore and refine the outcomes of entrepreneur mentoring. Practical implications: The findings serve to support those considering developing a mentor programme or including mentoring as part of a formal entrepreneurship education offer, specifically in a university setting but also beyond. Originality/value: The vast majority of entrepreneurship mentoring studies focus on the benefits to the mentee. By focusing on benefits and challenges for the entrepreneur mentor, this study extends our knowledge of the benefit of entrepreneurship mentoring. It offers an empirically derived entrepreneur mentor outcomes framework, as well as offering insights into challenges for the entrepreneur mentor within an HE setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a teaching model framework, we systematically review empirical evidence on the impact of entrepreneurship education (EE) in higher education on a range of entrepreneurial outcomes, analyzing 159 published articles from 2004 to 2016. The teaching model framework allows us for the first time to start rigorously examining relationships between pedagogical methods and specific outcomes. Reconfirming past reviews and meta-analyses, we find that EE impact research still predominantly focuses on short-term and subjective outcome measures and tends to severely underdescribe the actual pedagogies being tested. Moreover, we use our review to provide an up-to-date and empirically rooted call for less obvious, yet greatly promising, new or underemphasized directions for future research on the impact of university-based entrepreneurship education. This includes, for example, the use of novel impact indicators related to emotion and mind-set, focus on the impact indicators related to the intention-to-behavior transition, and exploring the reasons for some contradictory findings in impact studies including person-, context-, and pedagogical model-specific moderators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time of growing interest in graduate entrepreneurship, this study focuses on the role of mentoring in developing students' entrepreneurial careers in the Early Years of University (EYU). An integrated conceptual framework is presented that combines mentoring functions and entrepreneurial development (entrepreneurial intentions and nascent behaviour). Data from 18 student mentees who expressed an interest in starting their own businesses, and who were mentored by alumni entrepreneurs of a British University were analysed. Findings support the applicability of our framework in addressing the multi-faceted nature of the mentoring functions, which include a range of knowledge development and socio-emotional functions such as entrepreneurial career development, specialist business knowledge, role-model presence and emotional support. The results contribute to understanding mentoring functions and entrepreneurial development in the EYU. Implications for the design of entrepreneurial mentoring programmes and avenues for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on entrepreneurship education (EE) theory, this article examines the role of learning and inspiration in developing students' entrepreneurial intentions in the First Year in Higher Education. This addresses the paucity of research on early university experiences of EE and their influence on entrepreneurial intentions. Using a longitudinal survey of business students at a British university, the authors identify four scenarios related to the participation/non-participation in EE and subsequent increase or decrease of entrepreneurial intentions. A sub-set of those surveyed are interviewed (n = 49) to better understand how their university experience has influenced their entrepreneurial intentions. Findings suggest that the influence of EE is variable, in some cases even leading to a decrease in entrepreneurial intentions. The results contribute to theories of EE and intentions in the early stages of higher education. The authors discuss implications for theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]