What I’ve Learned About Teaching Entrepreneurship

• As entrepreneurship educators, we must empower students to learn actionable lessons from the past, without limiting their imaginations about the future.
• In addition, the more we expose ourselves to different university ecosystems—that is, different entrepreneurial environments—the broader perspective we will have to share with our students.
• Part of our job is to turn our classrooms into places where students are comfortable being vulnerable and risking failure, not where they would rather play it safe.

You may be familiar with the saying that an entrepreneur is someone who “works 100 hours a week for themselves to avoid working 40 hours a week for someone else” or who “jumps out of a plane and builds a parachute on the way down.” While neither of these statements is an absolute, each depicts the mindset we often associate with aspiring entrepreneurs.

But how can we teach aspiring entrepreneurs to embrace risk and continual uncertainty? How can we teach them to develop the skillsets, mindsets, and persistence necessary for success in an unknowable future?

As we ask ourselves these questions, those of us who teach entrepreneurship walk a delicate line. We know from experience that entrepreneurs must learn some lessons—such as how to make payroll, execute tough decisions, and hire and fire—on the job. Most entrepreneurs figure out through trial and error what hats they can wear and which tasks they need to delegate. They learn when they should dig in and endure a rough patch and when they should turn out the lights on a costly experiment that is unlikely to pan out.

Because it requires people to learn as they go, becoming a successful entrepreneur is a bit like becoming a good parent. But both parents and entrepreneurs can gain a wealth of wisdom by learning from the examples of those who have gone before. Whether by reading books or hearing other founders tell their stories, aspiring entrepreneurs can save themselves the agony of making the same mistakes.

That’s why there has been such a surge of interest in podcasts such as “How I Built This.” That’s why students continue to enroll in courses that help them learn about the history and practice of entrepreneurship.

Therein lies the balance we must strike. We must empower our students to learn actionable lessons from the past, without limiting their imagination about the future.

For over a decade now, I’ve had what I consider the best job in the world—even better than working for myself. As a professor of entrepreneurship, I have the privilege of helping students turn their ideas into realities. And, each day, I learn something new.

Recently, I took time to reflect on what I have learned as a teacher of entrepreneurship, an editor of a journal focused on entrepreneurship education, and a director of entrepreneurship programs and academic organizations. I share three takeaways, in hopes they create value for others.

1. There Is Power in Cross-Pollination

It’s crucial not to become too comfortable or complacent in your position as an educator. Spend too long in the same classroom, and you may begin to consider yourself the smartest person in it. This mindset leads to the perception that a professor is an all-knowing sage. It is the beginning of the end of being open to new ideas.

The remedy to this complacency is to broaden your experience as much as possible—ideally in different entrepreneurship programs. Each university is its own ecosystem, each with unique student populations, strengths, weaknesses, and resources. You can’t create an exact replica of one university’s ecosystem anywhere else, just as you can’t replicate Silicon Valley in another region without considering the unique attributes that region brings to the table.

Becoming too comfortable or complacent in your position as an educator is the beginning of the end of being open to new ideas.

But you can learn from each ecosystem. The more you expose yourself to different entrepreneurial environments, the broader perspective you will have.

In my case, I learned a great deal from my time at Fresno State in California, the University of Tampa, and my current institution, Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. I can couple the lessons I learned while teaching at these schools with my experiences attending the Symposium for Entrepreneurship Educators at Babson College in Babson Park, Massachusetts, and the Experiential Classroom at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

I also have learned from so many colleagues who welcomed me into their campus communities. I have learned from those who shared information about their programs at entrepreneurship conferences, such as those held by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, the Global Consortium for Entrepreneurship Centers, and the International Council for Small Business. For me, the most valuable aspect of attending these conferences is, without a doubt, hearing from other program and center directors about what’s working well for them.

2. Co-Curricular Learning Is Essential

There is much vigorous debate about the best path forward for higher education. But one thing that most educators and researchers in this discipline agree on is that entrepreneurship students benefit most from experiential learning.

I don’t disagree with this idea—in fact, my own research supports it. But educators often define “experiential learning” too narrowly. Moreover, we often exclude online learning modalities and the experiential nature of media such as film, television, and podcasts, all of which are tremendously powerful.

When I think about how to engage students with my class, whether online or in person, I go back to my roots as a PhD student at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. I draw inspiration from a centuries-old, tried-and-true experience: Mardi Gras.

When you go to the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans, you don’t stand back and just watch the parade—you take an active part in it. I strive for my classes to feel the same way, albeit with a bit less revelry than you’ll find in the French Quarter! I work hard to have my classes function not as havens where shrinking violets can sit back quietly, but as events that inspire crowd participation. I want each class to empower my students to change their behaviors, even if they might not realize they have changed until they reflect back on their experience.

I create a space where my students learn to support one another as part of a peer group. They empathize with, draw energy from, and gain momentum because of one another as they collectively build a positive and productive experience. During each class session, students have opportunities to be bold, to try something new, and to push boundaries. I use a lot of exercises from James Hart’s Classroom Exercises for Entrepreneurship, as well as from a book by Heidi Neck and colleagues called Teaching Entrepreneurship. The latter resource features some of my favorite exercises, including “puzzles and stories,” “hot seat,” and “sweating the small stuff.”

Part of our job is to turn our classrooms into places where our students are comfortable being vulnerable, not where they can play it safe.

That said, faculty also have opportunities to play it safe. For many, “safe” amounts to a textbook with a great slide deck, test bank, and answer key. “Safe” becomes a crutch that allows our students to progress through a static, linear process that likely will still conform to the educational standards of our schools.

Unfortunately, safety is antithetical to the journey of entrepreneurship. What could possibly be safe about the life of an entrepreneur? Starting an enterprise is more akin to playing a game than following a linear process. There are multiple “right” paths forward and countless setbacks (also known as learning opportunities) along the way. The most successful entrepreneurs learn quickly to be comfortable living with ambiguity and making their own path.

Part of our job is to turn our classrooms into places where our students are comfortable being vulnerable, not where they can play it safe.

3. No Child Learns to Ride a Bicycle From a Lecture

Content is a commodity, so it stands to reason that how we teach is perhaps even more important than what we teach.

Today, we have access to an avalanche of information, everywhere, all the time. Much of this information is available for free, at the click of a button. Any budding entrepreneur can find no shortage of YouTube videos covering any challenge that arises.

If students have so many instructional videos at their disposal, what value do they get from paying top dollar to attend our formal entrepreneurship programs? I would argue that our schools provide value not by offering students access to information, but by helping them find the most valuable information and figure out how to take action on it.

Or, as E.O. Wilson, a biologist at Harvard, once put it, “We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.” Our role as contemporary educators is to help students cut through all the noise and find that wisdom.

I grew up thinking of an educator as a sage on a stage—as a person of letters off in some ivory tower, willing to come down from time to time and share the fire of knowledge. But those days are over. Educators are no longer delivery mechanisms for information as much as they are guides helping students navigate their learning journeys. As professors, we must act as coaches who are right there on the playing field with our students.

Our goal is not just to hear ourselves speak, but to truly educate future entrepreneurs and inspire them to act.

Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” I believe that we do not reach our full potential when we don’t tap into our imaginations. The future won’t belong to those who can most readily recall facts and dates—Google and ChatGPT can do that faster and more accurately than we could ever hope to. The future will belong to those with the power of imagination, creativity, and collaborative leadership.

This is a significant shift in our view of education. The pedagogies long used by educators will not necessarily best serve our students today. We will need to adopt new skills and approaches to teaching, whether in physical classrooms or online, to prepare students to succeed.

Always More to Learn

Of course, these takeaways only represent what I’ve learned so far. My learning journey is still unfolding in earnest. As educators, we should never think we know all we need to know.

That realization can be a frightening prospect, especially for junior faculty who are told to play it safe, to use proven textbook approaches, to maintain the status quo. And in some ways, this is smart advice. This approach takes less prep time, which gives professors more time to pursue research. It’s also scary for senior faculty who must allow themselves to be vulnerable and admit they don’t have every answer on instant recall.

As I say above, you can’t teach a child to ride a bicycle with a lecture. You need to be there alongside that child throughout the bike-riding experience. It’s no different for teaching entrepreneurship. Most entrepreneurship educators and successful entrepreneurs would agree that, if we want to prepare the next generation of innovators and changemakers, we can’t play it safe in the classroom. We must roll up our sleeves, get our hands dirty, and go all in right beside our students. Our goal is not just to hear ourselves speak, but to truly educate future entrepreneurs and inspire them to act.

We live in a cynical age when trust in nearly every institution has plummeted. Who still garners the most trust and reverence in our society? The small business owners, the entrepreneurs, and the visionaries willing to gamble on a vision—even if they are the only ones who can see it.

Babe Ruth said, “Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.” That’s good advice for anyone, not just for baseball players coming up to bat. Entrepreneurship is a context where failure and success go hand-in-hand; it’s a process that drives progress and impact. And it’s an honor to help prepare the next generation to take up the mantle.