Promoting the entrepreneurship agenda across higher education institutes, HEIs, and the importance o

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Promoting the entrepreneurship agenda across
higher education institutes, (HEIs), and the
importance of staff engagement

• Professor Pauric McGowan
• Director
• Northern Ireland Centre for Entrepreneurship,
  (NICENT)

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Promoting the entrepreneurship agenda across
higher education and the importance of staff
engagement

• In this presentation I will seek
• Consider the changing context that is redefining
  the role of the academic in HEIs
• Review the experiences of the Northern Ireland
  Centre for Entrepreneurship, (NICENT)
• Reflect on some of the implications of
• that experience
• Consider strategies to encourage
• buy-in

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Promoting the entrepreneurship agenda across
higher education

• Nothing less than the development of the
  Entrepreneurial University or Institute of
  Technology.

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The advent of the entrepreneurial university

• Like any enterprise, an entrepreneurial
  university will be entrepreneurial because the
  people in it are entrepreneurs
• Stimulation of entrepreneurial behaviour through
  curriculum development,
• Exploitation of knowledge and technology,
• Engagement with business sector
  
  

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Factors influencing the expansion of universities
mission in current times

• HEIs are increasingly under pressure
• To be more relevant in society,
• To behave more entrepreneurially by government,
  business and society generally
• To reflect the new world of work for which
  graduates must be prepared

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Entrepreneurship Education, its role

• The future prosperity of society depends on all
  our young people, including the brightest and the
  best, and their parents coming to regard the
  business sector and in particular setting up
  their own business, as a valid and realistic
  career option
• Entrepreneurship and Education Action Plan,
  DETI, DE, DEL March 2003, p6

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The new world of work

• uncertainty and complexity
• fluid organisational structures
• greater probability of self employment
• wider responsibilities in family and social life
• global pressures
• Gibb and Hannon 2006

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NICENTs strategic challenge - building
awareness and engagement

• Through embedding entrepreneurship within the
  curriculum
• Through extra-curricular activity focusing on
  entrepreneurial new venturing, (ENV),

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Key outcomes for NICENT partnership since 2000

• Through Curriculum development
• gt17, 000 at undergraduate
• gt1900 at postgraduate
• Through extra-curricular activities
• gt900 students in gt300 business
• teams

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From the NICENT experience

• Staff in HEIs either embrace or reject the agenda
• Either way they have a critical impact on its
  progress as radical participants or determined
  reactionaries
• As participants their roles are as champions,
  supporters, gate-keepers and role models
• As reactionaries they are defenders
  of the status-quo, of
  traditional values

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Basis for resistance

• Ignorance and myopia about what entrepreneurship
  is and who entrepreneurial people are
• Pre-conceived notions about its associations with
  starting a new business and with the profit
  motive
• Pre-determination that agenda poses a threat to
  traditional university values
• The credibility of the subject vis-à-vis real
  academic subjects
• Perceived as additional effort and a distraction
  from proper university work

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Challenges to an entrepreneurial culture within a
university

• For many within HEIs the concept of
  entrepreneurship with its associations with
  business development and its interest in the
  profit motive provokes,..
• an image of shady villainy, a fifth column
  gnawing away at the basic values that define a
  university, a wolf masquerading as a milch-cow
• McNay 2002, p 2

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Entrepreneurial People

• People who start businesses - Entrepreneurial New
  Venturers
• People who grow businesses - Corporate
  entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs
• People who renew communities or social groups
  Social or Community Entrepreneurs

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Entrepreneurial people by their actions

• Exploit the opportunity in innovative ideas
• Challenge the status-quo
• Make a difference
• Add value
• Display particular traits and competencies

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Strategies to encourage buy-in

• Make the entrepreneurship agenda relevant
• Embed it, dont bolt it on
• Build awareness and encourage engagement
• Encourage ownership of the agenda, especially
  beyond Business and Management faculties
• Identify, support and reward champions
• Confirm credibility of entrepreneurship in
  research terms
• Develop a culture for entrepreneurship through
  celebrations of success and a can-do
  attitude
• Train the trainers
• Minimise the hassle-factor
• Personal selling

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Entrepreneurial people will save the world! The
reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions
that surround himThe unreasonable man adapts
surrounding conditions to himself All progress
depends on the unreasonable man George Bernard
Shaw
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Promoting the entrepreneurship agenda across
higher education institutions and the importance
of staff engagement

• Professor Pauric McGowan.
• Director.
• Northern Ireland Centre for Entrepreneurship,
  (NICENT),