Support for Entrepreneurship Education: A Hong Kong Case

Description

Innovation and entrepreneurship have long been regarded as the driving forces of economic growth and the provision of employment opportunities. On the other hand, innovation education is a relatively new yet highly complex discipline. Exactly how this multidisciplinary process involving the fostering of innovation and creativity, the knowledge of entrepreneurship and the essential traversal skills such as planning, presentation and teamwork are taught at different universities has rarely been explored. This paper presents an action-based entrepreneurial initiative at a university in Hong Kong. The case demonstrates that entrepreneurship education benefits best from the convergent effort of both faculty and professional personnel through tailored mentoring and coaching. Faculty staff and alumni with entrepreneurial experiences were positively related with strong entrepreneurial intentions and support to student entrepreneurs. Tailored language support enhance novice entrepreneurs' competence and better audience awareness when the pitch for products and concepts. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the initiatives, it was found that the "one-size-fits-all" approach is ineffective in entrepreneurship education. Instead, a learning-by-doing approach in a network context is more appropriate to increase the motivation of students or graduate entrepreneurs. Implication and challenges for entrepreneurship education support are provided.

Period	26 Mar 2017
Event title	The Asian Conference on Education and International Development
Event type	Conference
Location	Kobe, JapanShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International