Shaping the Entrepreneurship Intentions of Students: The Role of Education and Technological Creativity

Guided by the Theory of Planned Behaviour, this comparative study explores the collective impact of technological creativity and exposure to entrepreneurship education on the entrepreneurship intentions of students at particular tertiary institutions in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Using a quantitative case study of 284 tertiary education students who were randomly selected from the entrepreneurial programmes in the two countries, the study examines the extent to which these students' creativity and exposure to entrepreneurship education shaped their intentions to engage in entrepreneurship careers in the near future. The results demonstrate that a majority of the Zimbabwean and South African respondents intended to engage in entrepreneurship in the near future. In addition, the results from both countries proved that entrepreneurship education and technological creativity jointly predict the antecedents of entrepreneurship intention but have a non-significant direct effect on actual entrepreneurship intentions. To a large extent, the results validated the Theory of Planned Behaviour as a guiding tool for estimating any premeditated entrepreneurial behaviour. Hence, the model remains a profound theoretic lens for academics, educators and policy-makers' assessment of effective techniques of improving the mentoring of nascent entrepreneurs.