Teaching undergraduate students entrepreneurship skills: a boot camp for high impact technological business projects Armando Alemán Juárez, Ximena Capetillo García Williams, María del Carmen García Higuera

Teaching undergraduate students entrepreneurship skills: a boot camp for high impact technological business projects

Armando Alemán Juárez, Ximena Capetillo García Williams, María del Carmen García Higuera

Abstract

Recognizing the value of teaching entrepreneurship, Universidad Panamericana has mandatory courses in the undergraduate curricula. Furthermore, last year, the university offered a full immersion semester-long entrepreneurship boot camp in collaboration with a private company: iLab, a program designed to develop entrepreneurial talent by guiding students through the process of building up ideas and making them real through high impact technological business projects. This paper presents the experiences of nine student participants in the boot camp.

Preliminary findings focus on how entrepreneurship education influenced the development of undergraduate students. They strengthened some skills such as critical and analytical thinking, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit and interpersonal skills. Students described their experiences in iLab as very challenging but rewarding. In addition to hard work and the sacrifices they had to make in order for their projects to come through, they shared the importance of living the process (methodology), their personal growth, and how the experience enhanced their decision-making skills.

Alongside these results, findings provide insights for higher education institutions. To move to a student-centered model, higher education institutions need to include experiential learning projects and partner with different centers inside and outside the university to reshape the curricula and provide diverse learning experiences.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Business Skills, Technology, Projects, Project-Based Learning

1. INTRODUCTION AND PROBLEM

STATEMENT

Our understanding of teaching and learning in higher education has grown exponentially, and in some cases, has outpaced the conceptions of teaching. Bass (2012) describes how the fine boundary between the classroom and life experience, along with the increased power of social learning, and integrative contexts have created new ways of learning and disruptive teaching experiences.

Literature has shown that entrepreneurship education benefits students from all socioeconomic backgrounds because it helps develop unique talents and skills, such as critical thinking, communication, and collaboration (Rodov & Truong, 2015). Moreover, Hegarty (2006) states that teaching entrepreneurship in universities can encourage

Publicación original en

INTED18 Proceedings

Año 2018

Páginas

8078-8084

ISSN

2340-1079

doi

10.21125/inted.2018.1953

Referencia bibliográfica

Alemán, A., Capetillo, X. y García, M. C. (2018). Teaching undergraduate students entrepreneurship skills: A boot camp for high impact technological business projects. INTED18 Proceedings, 8078-8084. doi: 10.21125/ inted.2018.1953.

students to look creatively at their future opportunities, and can help develop not only the capacity to start companies, but also to think creatively and ambitiously.

Mexico, like many other countries, is facing challenges such as a rapid social change, worldwide competition, environmental sustainability, and a knowledge-based economic shift. To face these challenges and to convert them into opportunities, Mexico needs innovative and creative entrepreneurial responses. Higher education institutions have a crucial role to play; they need to be proactive in developing entrepreneurial graduates. Universities need to expose their students to environments where they can foster entrepreneurial mind-sets. Taatila (2010) talks about how academic education allows students to better understand latest developments in the different fields and to have a clear view of how to implement business. Furthermore, the author stated that academic entrepreneurs could be more successful in using their skills in new ventures.

Research on entrepreneurship has been conducted for decades. However, there is not a universal agreement of what skills are essential or required to be an entrepreneur; authors described social and psychological competencies, more than technical or academical abilities. Skills such as perseverance, trust, determination initiative, self-confidence, tolerance to ambiguity, creativity, and motivation are found in the literature (Zimmer & Scarborough, 2002; Lambing & Kuel, 2000). Moreover, there is still a disagreement on how these skills should be taught or acquired by students.

Béchard and Gregoire (2005) analyze a sample of 103 entrepreneurship education articles, describing four significant challenges in this topic: the social and economic role of entrepreneurship, the systematization of education, the content matter to be taught, and the teaching interventions for individual students. A study by Taatila (2010) presents a review of different methods for teaching entrepreneurship in higher education. First, Politis (2008) recommends focussing on the development of critical thinking. There is also some evidence about how attitudes can be fostered especially by learning in concrete business projects. Also, Taatilia presents some case studies that have been successful in entrepreneurial education. For example, a project for graduate students (Kangaslahti, 2008) required a full immersion hands-on experience and to give the students a network for starting a business. Similarly, an effort from Laurea University with an undergraduate program is based on learning by doing where students personally experience authentic situations and work with partnerships (Taatila, 2006). The author concludes that learning within a real environment seems essential in entrepreneurial education allowing students to understand entrepreneurship, to take care of all the details, and to let them fail.

The importance of entrepreneurial competencies in the job market and in the development of countries is well studied, and it will grow in the future. Higher education institutions need to address this need and provide different learning environments for students to acquire these competencies.

In the following sections, we describe the iLab program and its relationship with teaching entrepreneurship skills in undergraduate programs at the College of Engineering at Universidad Panamericana (UP), along with the results and conclusions of interviewing some students to know their learning perspective about the project.

2. TEACHING ENTREPRENEURSHIP SKILLS

THROUGH ILAB

2.1 Program description

Universidad Panamericana partnered iLab, a private company to propose a program for high impact technological entrepreneurship business projects. A full immersion semester-long camp was offered at the university by the College of Engineering. The boot camp was open to other majors.

Besides, students could obtain credit hours for the semester. The primary objective of iLab boot camp is that students participating in the program need to develop a high impact technological business project.

The camp was designed with the intent to develop entrepreneurial talent by guiding students through the process of building up ideas and making them real. Students defined how to solve a worldwide problem meaningfully with the correct business model. This was the first time that the College of Engineering, and in fact Universidad Panamericana offered a program like this to promote entrepreneurship competencies among its students.

The iLab experience was offered to undergraduate and graduate students from Universidad Panamericana, Mexico, as a first-hand entrepreneurial experience by solving a problem that hampers at least 10 million people worldwide. Hence, the curricular methodology of the boot camp included subjects ranging all the way from creativity and innovation to business model, finances, marketing, prototyping, change management and so on. At the beginning of the experience, participants were called rookies, and they were expected to develop a solid plan to solve a specific problem comprehensively: with a feasible business model proposal and technological viability. After four months, participants became “iLabbers.”

Since most of the rookies were still in their undergraduate programs, they were warned, from the beginning, that the advisories would be very different from their usual classes; thus, they need to start to change their mind-sets. Rookies were no longer seen as students; they need to think of themselves as entrepreneurs, business women and men who would give all their time and effort those upcoming four months to find a way to change the world. And to do it right.

The full-semester immersion was offered to fourteen students, four men and ten women. Two participants were from the School of Pedagogy, and twelve from the College of Engineering. Advisories were given every day from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. After that, the participants were given a task to apply what they had learned in their own project. Students began working independently and later on made teams. By the end of the program, six of them were made according to whom the participants wanted to be associated with and what kind of problem they wanted to solve. Hence, six different problems were addressed with a technological entrepreneurial approach.

3. METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY

The purpose of the study was mainly exploratory and descriptive seeking to understand the perspective and describe the experiences of the iLab-UP participants regarding their decision to participate in the camp, their day-to-day experience and their perceived acquired entrepreneurship skills. The methodology of the study was qualitative, tied to the purpose of the study. The study used an exploratory data analysis as a “method for gaining new insights and understanding a […] phenomena” (Gall, Borg, & Gall, 1996, p.197).

Data came from a questionnaire with open-ended questions sent to all the student participants. 9 out of 12 participants responded to the questionnaire. In addition, individual interviews with some of the students were conducted. Researchers plan to continue interviewing all the students, and since this is the first time the program was offered, we expect to go on with the study in the following semesters collecting data from more students.

In qualitative inquiry, researchers are influenced by their background, history, and context as they make interpretations of the data collected (Creswell, 2002). Peshkin (1998) states that researchers need to recognize their subjectivity to shape the inquiry and outcomes. It is important to note that one of the authors of this paper was a participant in the iLab experience. She was very close to the other students, and it was easier for her to obtain the data by sharing her own experience.

In the next section, we present the results of the qualitative study conducted to explore the perceptions of the student participants in iLab regarding their acquired entrepreneurship skills.

4. RESULTS

We started the data analysis by constructing categories looking for recurring patterns. We used the comparative method defined by Merriam (1998) as “the continuous comparison of incidents, remarks, and so on with each other” (p. 168). First categories included day-to-day experiences and skills acquired. As we started to relate conceptual elements, we found out how personal growth was embedded in the environment because of the day-to-day experiences. We use a diagram to help visualize the main categories: 1) day-to-day experiences, 2) perceived skills acquired in three dimensions: instrumental, interpersonal, and systemic, and 3) how this experience contributed to their personal growth. See figure 1 for the final draft. The data was initially collected in Spanish so in this section we present the data in English and in its original language to provide both audiences with meaningful data.

4.1 Day to day experiences

The first category to be described refers to dayto-day experiences. Students shared how a daily practice in iLab enabled them to advance in the acquisition of specific skills, making possible to connect what they learned in the boot camp with their career. Participants 3 and 9 wrote about these actions in the next lines:

Working this way helped me to develop specific skills. (Trabajar de esta manera me ayudó a desarrollar ciertas habilidades.) [Participant 3].

I am thrilled about this experience, about connecting knowledge with my career and finding out where they make synergy, how they do it and how it could improve. (Me emociona mucho esta experiencia, el vincular los conocimientos con mi carrera y encontrar concretamente en dónde hacen sinergia, cómo la hacen y cómo se puede mejorar.) [Participant 9].

Figure 1. Main categories.

Participants in this camp allowed learners to understand the usefulness of iLab as a way to promote lifelong and self-directed learning.

Working every day in iLab helps you discover that learning is continuous and self-directed. (Trabajar todos los días en iLab hace que te des cuenta de que el aprendizaje es continuo y autodidacta.) [Participant 2].

4.2 Skills developed through the program

Due to the process of endeavour and hard work to create a successful project, students lived the iLab experience intensely, and in consequence, they developed some entrepreneurship skills, such as critical thinking, decision-making, negotiation, entrepreneurial thinking, among others. We distributed these skills in three dimensions, using Villa´s taxonomy: instrumental, interpersonal and systemic skills (2010).

The first dimension of the perceived skills acquired by the students refers to instrumental skills. Instrumental skills are described by Villa as means or mechanisms to obtain something (2010). Participants described the advance of critical and analytical thinking. For instance, participant 9 stated,

iLab taught me that change is inevitable and it helped me develop critical thinking to face change and adapt my project. (iLab me enseñó que el cambio es inevitable y me ayudó a desarrollar un pensamiento crítico para poder afrontarlo y adaptar a mi proyecto.) [Participant 9].

In this quote, the student shows how critical thinking permits a more flexible and receptive way of facing entrepreneurial challenges.

Similarly, analytical thinking is perceived by participants. The next two quotes demonstrate how this skill helps students find new ways of solving different type of problems:

The structure and development of various problems helped me to become more analytical and to identify areas of improvement. (La estructura y el desarrollo de distintas problemáticas me ayudó a ser más analítica y a encontrar áreas de oportunidad en donde menos lo hubiera esperado.) [Participant 9].

Every time I go out I analyze my environment, looking for different ways to solve problems. (Cada vez que salgo estoy analizando mi entorno, buscando problemas y la manera de cómo solucionarlos.) [Participant 3].

Solving a problem also requires the development of methodological skills, which are understood by Villa (2010) as the fundamental processes used to advance in the progression of general knowledge. Through iLab, participants declared to practice two methodological skills: decision-making and problem resolution.

It helped me to grow and to make decisions from a holistic and multidisciplinary point of view. (Me ayudó a crecer y a tomar decisiones desde un punto de vista holístico y multidisciplinario.) [Participant 9].

Positively, it helped me to understand more how things work out there, how it is to handle real people and problems and how to solve them. (De manera positiva, me ayudó a entender de mejor forma cómo funcionan las cosas allá afuera; cómo es enfrentarse a personas y a problemas reales y resolverlos.) [Participant 7].

The second dimension refers to interpersonal skills. Villa describes these skills as the different capabilities that help people have good interaction between them. They are classified as individual and social skills.

Participant 8 exposes, for instance, how the whole experience encouraged him to learn by himself,

It is a very valuable experience in the human aspect, four months in which you are challenging yourself every moment, and the only thing you have is yourself; you learn new things for yourself, and get to know things you never imagined you’d get to know, making things correctly and efficiently. (Es una experiencia que te deja mucho en el aspecto humano porque son cuatro meses en los cuales estás retándote a cada momento, y lo único que tienes eres tú, aprender nuevas cosas por ti mismo, hacerte conocedor de cosas que jamás imaginaste, hacer las cosas rápido y bien.) [Participant 8].

With the previous quote, we can understand how personal motivation helps students learn new things. In addition, they benefit from the ability of having resistance and environment adaptation. Furthermore, participant 6 explains how making mistakes inside the boot camp promotes resilience:

iLab taught me to have resilience, to learn from mistakes and to feel good about learning from them because they contribute to future decisions and to add value to my life. (iLab me enseñó a tener resiliencia, aprender del error y no sentirme mal al cometerlo sino mejor porque está aportando algo muy valioso a mi vida y decisiones futuras.) [Participant 6].

Moreover, the interdisciplinary approach of iLab promotes diversity and interculturality, a skill interpreted by Villa as the possibility to identify and accept cultural differences and disparities between societies of the world (2010). For example, participant 9 writes about how iLab made possible to accept diverse points of view:

The interdisciplinary approach helped me understand diverse points of view about how different ecosystems, cultures, the world, and life itself works; that is what I value the most, because having learned this I can make better decisions in my personal life. (El enfoque interdisciplinario me brindó distintos puntos de vista sobre el funcionamiento de distintos ecosistemas, culturas, del mundo y la vida en sí, y eso es de lo que más valoro; ya que con este aprendizaje puedo tomar mejores decisiones en mi vida personal.) [Participant 9].

On the other hand, social skills arose from the study: interpersonal communication and negotiation. Participant 2 exposed,

A better communication between teams… better language and presence in presentations. (Una mejor comunicación entre equipos.... mejor lenguaje y presencia en presentaciones.) [Participant 2].

Negotiation means knowing the way to confront and resolve conflicts (Villa, 2010). In this study, participant 9 reflects what she understands about negotiation inside iLab, a form to convince and sell their project:

Thanks to the planning of checkpoints, they made us learn how to communicate the essential, to sell our idea and to transmit our passion, to make our business model coherent. (Los checkpoints, también, dada su planificación, nos hicieron aprender a decir lo indispensable, vender nuestra idea, transmi-

tir nuestra pasión y hacer coherente nuestro modelo de negocios.) [Participant 9].

The third dimension includes entrepreneurial and leadership skills and these skills are related to creativity. Participant 2 shows how working on an entrepreneurial project through iLab helps her to be more human and creative:

In general, I think iLab makes you more human. It lets you be more creative and “crazy” without being judged, because at the end those are the kind of people who change the world. (En general siento que iLab te hace más humano. A permitirte ser creativo y “loco” sin que te juzguen, porque al final esas son las personas que cambian al mundo.) [Participant 2].

Entrepreneurial spirit is the capacity to use, with own initiative, certain resources to take advantage of an opportunity (Villa, 2010). The next two quotes evidence how iLab drove students´ decisions to have initiative for starting and undertaking an entrepreneurial project:

I had the idea of opening a company and succeed in doing something of my own, but I never tried. iLab gave me that push, to take the initiative of my future; and to believe that I could do something that, in addition of being my job, could make me happy, and be used as a product or service by many people. (Antes tenía la idea de abrir una empresa y lograr hacer algo mío pero nunca me había animado a intentarlo. iLab me dio ese impulso a tomar la iniciativa de mi futuro y creer que sí puedo lograr algo que, aparte de ser mi trabajo, me haga feliz a mí y a mucha gente que llegue a usar mis servicios/productos.) [Participant 6]. [Now] I have a different chip, I am ready to take the risk and to fight for my passion: to create solutions for the needs of our society, making products more humane without forgetting that everything is in human service [beings]. (Tengo un chip diferente, estoy decidida a tomar riesgos y a luchar por lo que siempre ha sido mi pasión: crear soluciones a las necesidades de la sociedad, humanizando más los productos y no olvidando que todo es en servicio humano.) [Participant 8].

4.3 Personal growth

Participants shared how their experiences help them grow in two ways, personal and professional. Regarding personal growth students shared how they learned to see different perspectives, to know themselves and to realize their value:

It shows you how to see things from different perspectives, to grow, to shine for who you really are. (Te enseña a ver las cosas de diferentes maneras, a crecer, a brillar por cómo eres en realidad.) [Participant 2].

It was very valuable, it helped me rethink many things, but overall, it made me realize how much I’m worth. (Fue muy enriquecedora, me hizo replantear muchas cosas pero sobre todo me hizo darme cuenta de mi gran valor.) [Participant 7].

It made me a better person in many ways because it helped me to get to know myself better and be more empathetic with problems the people I wanted to help faced. Which is why I had better results. (Me hizo una mejor persona en muchos aspectos ya que me hizo conocerme más y ser más empático con los problemas de las personas a las que quería ayudar, por lo tanto tuve mejores resultados.) [Participant 4].

As for professional growth, participants pointed out how they learned specific technical tools and knowledge about engineering and business which will serve them well for their professional future:

Positively, it gave me tools to work better. (De forma positiva dándome herramientas para trabajar de mejor forma.) [Participant 1].

Many engineering techniques that I never thought I would develop. (Muchas técnicas de ingeniería que nunca pensé desarrollar.) [Participant 2, education student].

It helped me grow as a business man and to diversify my income. (Me ayudó a desarrollarme como empresario y a tener diversificados mis ingresos.) [Participant 4].

It broadened my knowledge because it helped me to fully understand how a company works, more specifically a start-up. (Amplió mis conocimientos, ya que me permitió conocer de forma más integral el funcionamiento de una empresa, específicamente una start-up.) [Participant 5].

5. CONCLUSIONS

The study addressed students’ participation in a program offered by the university and a private partner: iLab, from a meaningful qualitative perspective that gave us a deep understanding of the experiences and learnings students acquired. Mainly results include the development of skills described by the participants, as well as how their day-to-day living experience leads to a personal growth.

Findings provide insights to move to a student-centered model. Higher education institutions need to include experiential learning projects and partner with different centers both inside and outside the university to reshape the curricula and provide different learning experiences to increase entrepreneurial education. In addition, higher education institutions need to allow students to work with real life cases and to change their pedagogy methods to more pragmatic approaches. Entrepreneurship education has a big role to play in developing new business, but more importantly to address the major social challenges of our century.

Results focus on how entrepreneurship influenced the development of undergraduate students. They strengthened skills such as critical and analytical thinking, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit and interpersonal skills, among others. Students described their experiences in iLab as very challenging but rewarding. In addition to hard work and the sacrifices they had to make in order for their projects to come through, they shared the importance of living the methodology, their personal growth, and how the experience enhanced their decision-making skills.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to kindly thank Víctor Moctezuma, Director and creator of iLab boot camp and Diego Edwards from the College of Engineering at UP for their help.

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Toda vida es una constante educación.

– Eleanor Roosevelt