Developing Entrepreneurship Learning Outcomes in Business Education and Beyond: Pedagogical Implications

High growth states and regions can be differentiated form low growth states and regions by their high investment in knowledge, low knowledge filter and high levels of entrepreneurial capital. These states help create and accumulate entrepreneurial capital by providing citizens with learning opportunities 'to be more enterprising' in their pursuit of value creation and capture. In the context of higher education then, fundamental questions arise about what 'constructively aligned' curriculum design, learning and teaching methodologies and assessment strategies can deliver the appropriate entrepreneurship learning outcomes in entrepreneurship education and training (EET) in an increasingly complex, uncertain and unknowable world. This paper reviews the current EET literature, assesses current thinking and practice in EET and concludes, in the absence of empirical evidence favouring a particular pedagogical approach, that a portfolio of practice-based methods is an appropriate approach to developing 'value-based' entrepreneurship learning outcomes. This portfolio of pedagogical approaches is sub-divided into five discrete but related primary pedagogies focusing on students' attempts to create and capture value by observing (observation research in the field), playing (serious games and simulations), experiencing (business start-up), creating (design-based creation and co-creation) and thinking reflectively (reflection-on-practice and reflection-in-practice) and not just understanding, knowing and talking as in more traditional approaches. This approach is heavily influenced by effectuation principles and the experimentally-driven ethos of the lean start-up movement. The paper concludes by suggesting a framework (with a case example) for assisting leadership groups in universities and higher education institutes to develop appropriate entrepreneurship learning outcomes at university/ institute, college, school, programme and module levels.