Keywords

1 Introduction

As shown in this book, entrepreneurship education (EE) holds enormous potential to contribute to sustainable transformation in many ways. Several authors underscore the critical role that entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs play in supporting the sustainable development goals (SGDs) defined within the UN’s agenda for sustainable development (Apostolopoulos et al., 2018; Moon, 2018; Pomare, 2018). This holds specifically true for sustainability entrepreneurship, which is seen as the answer to many 21st-century environmental and social challenges, such as climate change, poverty, and inequality. Greco and De Jong (2017, p.14) define sustainable entrepreneurship as “[…] the discovery, creation, and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities that contribute to sustainability by generating social and environmental gains for others in society.” Due to the societal relevance of these entrepreneurial endeavors, and their ability to generate positive economic, ecological, and social impacts, EE is also being increasingly discussed within higher education institutions (Mets et al., 2021; Strachan, 2018). The entrepreneurial knowledge, in particular, that is provided by, and the skills developed within universities, have been identified as important sources of knowledge spillover and regional development (Andersson et al., 2010; Belitski & Heron, 2017).

However, while almost everyone seems to agree on the relevance of entrepreneurship for society, and EE at higher education institutions, it remains unclear what exactly EE should aim to achieve, and how EE’s success can be captured. Academic work discusses didactical approaches, methods, and specific courses, as well as curriculum development with regard to education for transformative entrepreneurial activity, as we have seen with the selection of articles in this book. We also see some attempts to show the effects EE has, even though there is a lack of work focusing on what the actual outcome of EE should be, and how entrepreneurship and sustainability-oriented educational processes work. What is relevant for generating which kind of entrepreneurial activity? In this chapter, we elaborate on what EE targets, what the success of EE can be, and how these might be measured. We furthermore carve out the need for future research in this field, and call for a stronger competence orientation.

Successfully designing and implementing EE, innovative courses, modules, or curricula require an environment that fosters entrepreneurial thinking and acting among those responsible for shaping and realizing progress in higher education. This includes lecturers and researchers, as well as university leaders on the dean and (vice) president levels. We therefore also call for building EE ecosystems, which we will briefly introduce in the following. We will also derive recommendations for creating an EE-friendly environment.

2 Measuring the Success of Entrepreneurship Education

In light of the growing amount of work on developing and implementing successful elements of EE, the question also arises of which impact(s) it should have and actually has. While single evaluations of individual projects and formats have taken place, research shows no consistent results concerning the success of EE. This has also been criticized by the OECD (2009) and the EU-Kommission (2012), with the latter stating: “It is important to ensure that Member States are not producing their own individual national measures, but instead that they will join forces to find ways to measure the broad impact of entrepreneurship education.” Numerous studies and even meta-analyses have been carried out (e.g., Bae et al., 2014; Martin et al., 2013; Nabi et al., 2016; Pittaway & Cope, 2007; Rideout & Gray, 2013). We have carved out two areas of impact that EE focuses upon, mainly based on the work of Nabi et al. (2016), Henry et al. (2005), as well as Jack and Anderson (1998). We briefly introduce them in the following while stressing the findings that studies in these areas have shown so far.

2.1 Increasing Start-Up Activity

One field of research focuses on actual entrepreneurial action as the final outcome of EE, as well as the willingness to become a (sustainability) entrepreneur as prerequisites. There is extensive work on the influence of EE on the attitude toward entrepreneurship (Boldureanu et al., 2020; Lina et al., 2019). The majority of the work on the impact of EE on the attitudes of students toward entrepreneurship states that students see entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs more positively after participating in entrepreneurship courses, are more interested in the topic, and in some cases are even more willing to set up a company by themselves (Basu, 2010; De Clercq et al., 2013; Hegarty, 2006; Jones & Jones, 2011).

As an entrepreneurship-positive attitude alone does not necessarily lead to entrepreneurial action, other studies analyze the impact of education on entrepreneurial intention, because both are seen as valuable predictors of creating new businesses (Bilić et al., 2011; Krueger et al., 2000; Marques et al., 2018; Mugiono et al., 2021; Paray & Kumar, 2020). We can find two schools of thought among scholars arguing that EE is positively related to EI: human capital theory, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy (Bae et al., 2014). On the one hand, human capital can be understood as “the skills and knowledge that individuals acquire through investments in schooling, on-the-job training and other types of experience” (Unger et al., 2011, p. 343). Scholars of this school contend that EE improves students’ human capital, which may in turn cultivate individual attitudes toward entrepreneurship and their intentions to engage in entrepreneurial projects (Liñán, 2008).

On the other hand, self-efficacy with regard to entrepreneurship can be described as “belief in one’s ability to successfully perform the various roles and tasks of entrepreneurship (Bae et al., 2014) and it is a widely known catalysator of entrepreneurial intentions” (Fitzsimmons & Douglas, 2011; Scott & Twomey, 1988; Wang et al., 2002). Researchers in EE that support this view assess that EE can be associated with four determinants of self-efficacy: vicarious experience, enactive mastery, emotional arousal, and verbal persuasion (Bandura, 1982, 1986). These elements are facilitated by EE, which help maintain motivation and interest in entrepreneurial achievement, lead to greater expectations of success (Stumpf et al., 1987), and increase entrepreneurial self-efficacy as a result (Bae et al., 2014).

Li and Wu (2019) analyze the influence mechanism of entrepreneurial education on entrepreneurial intention from the perspective of cognition and emotion. These encompass both self-regulation and social cognitive theories to portray the reasons for EE to increase entrepreneurial intentions. In their research, Li and Wu (2019) found that EE increases entrepreneurial self-efficacy and passion. Team cooperation also significantly moderates the relation between both variables mentioned above. These researchers also determined that entrepreneurial passion and self-efficacy act as underlying mechanisms by mediating the connection between entrepreneurial education and EI. Their findings also highlighted that team cooperation has a significant moderating effect on entrepreneurial codependence between EE and EI through emotional and cognitive pathways.

In sum, empirical studies deliver mixed results. Many authors stress a positive effect of EE on the willingness to found an own business (Costa et al., 2016; Shah et al., 2020). Others criticize methodological deficiencies that limit these results, or point at other factors influencing entrepreneurial intentions that may not have been (sufficiently) included in some of the studies (Lorz et al., 2011; Pittaway & Cope, 2007). Furthermore, entrepreneurship intentions and orientation, and how EE influence them can depend on various factors. The age of students as well as the timing (the stage of their studies) may also play a role. For example, Florin et al. (2007) found that entrepreneurship intentions tend to be higher by the end of students’ studies when they are about to graduate compared to the beginning of their studies. Others underline the importance of the motivation to attend an entrepreneurship course. According to Hamidi et al. (2008), it is critical that students voluntarily take part in EE. Their field of study also plays a key role (Maresch et al., 2015), as well as the way EE is designed and conducted. Piperopoulos and Dimov (2015), for example, state that EE has a higher impact on entrepreneurial intentions when it is more practically oriented than theory-driven. Recent work also elaborates on the moderating instead of direct effects of EE. As an example, Shah et al. (2020) show how EE influences the attitude toward entrepreneurship, subjective norms, and self-efficacy as predictors of entrepreneurship orientation. Nonetheless, some authors find a negative impact of EE on entrepreneurship orientation and intentions. This is justified among other things by the fact that students estimate a start-up more realistically as a result of EE (Fayolle & Gailly, 2015; Oosterbeek et al., 2010).

Finally, we also find studies that address actual job decisions and the founding of start-ups to measure EE’s success (e.g., Donnellon et al., 2014; Gielnik et al., 2015; Premand et al., 2016; Jones et al., 2017). Most of these studies show a positive influence of EE on outcome, measured in terms of start-ups. Vincett and Farlow (2008) even show that between 25% and 50% of students who participated in EE started their own business in the years following graduation. When assessing whether EE leads to increased start-up activity, a wide variety of framework factors nevertheless need to be considered, e.g., the current state of the labor market (Støren, 2014). In addition, collecting data with regard to long-term effects is not easy. Long-term studies such as those delivered by Dutta et al. (2011), Burrows and Wragg (2013), or Matlay (2008) make this difficulty clear.

2.2 Developing Entrepreneurial Competencies

Assuming that founding new businesses is the only or final goal of EE, two questions arise: 1. Why do we find entrepreneurship courses being offered to employees of existing companies, as well as studies on the effect of EE on nascent as well as experienced entrepreneurs? 2. Don’t we need entrepreneurial activity (from a broader perspective) in far more situations than just a business foundation? For example, can’t extensive benefit be derived from the transformational potential of entrepreneurial thinking and acting within existing organizations (intrapreneurship) or political systems (political/governmental entrepreneurship)?

In other words, entrepreneurial activity can be seen as far more than founding businesses. According to Barot (2015), entrepreneurial practice starts with actively creating any type of organization. Others use even broader definitions (Diandra & Azmy, 2020). One of the most famous working definitions is “the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources that you currently control” (Stevenson, 2000, p. 489). Eisenmann (2013) presents the following arguments for this definition: “First, it sees entrepreneurship as a distinctive approach to managing rather than a specific stage in an organization’s life cycle (i.e., start-up), a specific role for an individual (i.e., founder), or a constellation of personality attributes (e.g., predisposition for risk-taking; preference for independence). In this view, entrepreneurs can be found in many different types of organizations, including large corporations.”

Entrepreneurship orientation for instance is based on a broader view, and understood as a factor positively influencing company success (Gans et al., 2000; Semrau et al., 2016). According to Hughes et al. (2018, p. 119), “EO can be defined as the nature of the decision-making mindset, behaviors, and processes underpinning the firm’s strategy creation practice, competitive posture, and management philosophy and thus encapsulates the entrepreneurial tendencies of the firm.” Based on the definitions of Miller (1983) as well as Covin and Slevin (1989), entrepreneurship orientation conceptualizations often include innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking behavior. This work has long been established as a relevant research field, with the respective studies dealing with questions on how entrepreneurship orientation can be built up and applied. The field meanwhile also combines entrepreneurship and sustainability, most notably as they relate to sustainable transformation when, e.g., looking at social entrepreneurship orientation (Gali et al., 2020; Halberstadt et al., 2021; Kraus et al., 2017). However, while most of the work here deals with the entrepreneurship orientation of companies, we also find studies on the (social) entrepreneurial orientation of people (Ganjali & Bagherimajd, 2021; Satar & Natasha, 2019). In addition, the entrepreneurial orientation of a company is determined by the attitude and skills of the responsible leaders. This is also the case with decision makers in other settings such as societal and governmental organizations.

Using a broader definition strengthens the importance of entrepreneurial behavior and entrepreneurship because it highlights the increasing potential for entrepreneurs to act as an engine of global economic development, and a force for positive societal change (Eisenmann, 2013; Ratten & Usmanij, 2021). In other words, seen this way, entrepreneurial activity plays an important role in sustainable transformation—as seen in the various examples in this book. EE should thus contribute to enabling students to solve societal problems, or generate positive economic, social, and/or ecological impacts. Some studies have shown these effects, emphasizing that EE can increase the academic performance of students, and lead to a change in mindsets toward life and society (Nasrullah et al., 2016). Here, EE’s main task is shifted toward developing entrepreneurial skills and expertise that enable students to act entrepreneurially in a broader sense—including but not limited to the founding of businesses. The question then is: What are the relevant competencies that EE should focus on?

Entrepreneurship literature delivers five important sets of competencies (Lans et al., 2014):

  • Opportunity competence (enables entrepreneurs to detect and exploit opportunities by systematically developing adequate problem solutions) (Companys & McMullen, 2007; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000).

  • Social competence (helps entrepreneurs identify and adequately interact and communicate with relevant stakeholders [network building]) (Baron & Tang, 2009; Walter et al., 2006).

  • Business competence (allows for the proper management of an enterprise covering the use of resources, decision-making, and business strategy development) (Brickmann et al., 2011; Chandler & Hanks, 1994; Foss & Mahnke, 2002).

  • Industry-specific competence (includes experiences and knowledge that are relevant to a specific market) (Baum & Locke, 2004; Colombo & Grilli, 2005; Ucbasaran et al., 2008).

  • Entrepreneurial self-efficacy (constitutes the ability to believe in one’s entrepreneurial competence and counts as one of the strongest individual-level predictors) (Mauer et al., 2017; McGee et al., 2009; Rauch & Frese, 2007).

In addition, when focusing on a broader perspective, we find overlap, or even a fusion of sustainability and entrepreneurship competencies; without entrepreneurial thinking and acting, sustainable change would not be possible. Based on the key competencies in sustainability developed presented by Wiek et al. (2011), Lans et al. (2014) derived a set of seven key competencies for sustainable entrepreneurship. Ploum et al. (2018) aggregated these and other studies to arrive at six main competencies:

  • Strategic management and action competence (consist of the ability to actively involve oneself in responsible actions for the improvement of the sustainability of social-ecological systems and the ability to collectively design projects, implement interventions, transitions, and strategies for sustainable development practices) (De Haan, 2006; Mogensen & Schnack, 2010).

  • Embracing diversity and interdisciplinary competence (is the ability to structure relationships, spot issues, and recognize the legitimacy of other viewpoints in business decision-making processes, be it about environmental, social, and/or economic issues) (De Haan, 2006; Ellis & Weekes, 2008).

  • Systems thinking competence (helps identify and analyze all relevant (sub)systems across different domains (people, planet, profit) and disciplines, including their boundaries) (Wesselink et al., 2015).

  • Normative competence (allows sustainability values, principles, and targets to be mapped, applied, and reconciled with internal and external stakeholders without embracing any given norm, but instead based on the good character of the one who is involved in sustainability issues) (Blok et al., 2016; Wesselink et al., 2015).

  • Foresighted thinking competence (is the ability to collectively analyze, evaluate, and craft “pictures” of the future in which the impact of local and/or short-term decisions on environmental, social, and economic issues are viewed on a long-term global/cosmopolitan scale) (Wesselink et al., 2015).

  • Interpersonal competence (includes motivating, enabling, and facilitating collaborative and participatory sustainability activities and research) (Schlange, 2009; Wesselink et al., 2015).

Halberstadt et al. (2019a) suggest a competence framework for social entrepreneurship. We adapted this to sustainability entrepreneurial competencies in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Sustainability entrepreneurship competence framework

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These entrepreneurial competencies are receiving growing interest in EE research, even while most authors stress the urgent need for additional work on using and testing competence frameworks. Researchers and teachers should take these or selected competencies as a basis for developing their educational offerings. Returning to our initial question, it is important to not only develop higher education competence-oriented but also test and evaluate whether the approaches actually contribute to the development or improvement of these competencies. To do so, “more research about the ‘how’ question is necessary to further support teachers in their effort to design competence-based curricula, courses and authentic learning activities aimed at learning for sustainable entrepreneurship” (p. 45). Only a few studies analyze the influence of EE on skill development. While studies like those presented by Halberstadt et al. (2019a, 2019b) focus on a variety of competencies and how service learning formats influence these as a specific form of EE (for detailed information on service learning, see the work by Schank and Halberstadt in this book), others deal with selected competencies. According to Bell (2015), for example, EE is shown to improve communication, problem-solving, and financial skills. Increasing business knowledge and skills connected to innovation is also stressed. Matsheke and Dhurup (2017) as well as Abaho et al. (2015) show a positive effect of EE on entrepreneurial self-efficacy. The latter underlines that self-efficacy increases with the number of methods being used.

However, inconsistent or a lack of effects, or even negative influences of EE on entrepreneurial skills are also found (Hattab, 2014; Kassean et al., 2015; Oosterbeek et al., 2010; Souitaris et al., 2007). One explanation for these adverse effects can be that students assess being an entrepreneur as more difficult than expected, which can negatively influence the attitude toward entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and/or the willingness to gain entrepreneurial skills. This could also be traced back to the quality of EE, the personality of trainers, and/or the overall picture of entrepreneurs that might emerge. In sum, there still is a vast need for further investigation. Empirical work in particular is missing on sustainable competence development as an indicator of EE’s success. A prerequisite for this is the measurement of competence development; research here remains scarce. One recent exception, however, is seen in the study by Redman et al. (2021). Based on a systematic review of the growing body of research on the assessment of sustainability competencies, they introduce and analyze various self-perceiving-, observation-, and test-based assessment procedures. This could be the first step into more research in this field.

3 Some General Recommendations for Developing and Implementing Entrepreneurship Education

Against this background, some recommendations can be made with regard to the design of EE. According to Reich (2004), EE formats should be more constructivist based. This means that a subject-independent reality, about which there is objective, subject-independent knowledge that can be “implanted” into the “ignorant” learners through instruction is not assumed here. Instead, it is assumed that the world and its knowledge are constructed individually (Siebert, 1999; Reich, 2004). From this perspective, entrepreneurs are neither “born” nor can they be “made” mechanistically through clever teaching-learning arrangements. Instead, against the background of constructivist didactics, EE involves offering individuals a teaching-learning arrangement, and not imposing it on them, allowing them to make their own learning experiences in a self-determined manner. This is in line with current work on experience-based learning (Williams Middleton et al., 2014), such as service learning (Schank et al., 2020) or challenge-based learning (Hölzner and Halberstadt, 2022).

Within this kind of EE arrangement, diverse “learning stimuli” are offered in a method mix (theory-oriented lectures as well as action-oriented methods such as business simulations, projects, and competitions, and “real-life” experiences). At the same time, orientation including, e.g., mentors should be offered (Euler, 2014). This mix of methods should not be random or chaotic, but theoretically well-founded and structured (Fiet, 2000), since this is the only long-term way to create a corresponding coherent pattern, and thus an ability to act on the part of the learner. One possibility here is to orientate yourself using the experience-based learning cycle according to Kolb (1984) while building up EE formats in the order of theoretical input, illustration, exercise, and reflection. Overall, EE should follow a macro-didactic concept (Braukmann et al., 2009). Here, different EE learning impulses are repeatedly set in different contexts, e.g., in a wide variety of seminars with regard to content, and in an interdisciplinary manner in each semester. Over time, these additional content and learning impulses should come together like a mosaic to form a whole, guaranteeing the most comprehensive, sustainable development of entrepreneurial skills possible.

This effect could be increased when the structure of the course itself calls for more personal responsibility and self-organization. Here, the participants themselves and their personal progress, for example, in planning their career, become a kind of entrepreneurial project. At the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, for instance, this is implemented in the form of “Studium Individuale” (Leuphana Universität, 2021). The students can attend an orientation semester with a variety of introductory courses. Afterward, they decide what their idea is for their professional career and their studies, i.e., which field of activity they aim for, what they want to study, and why. Then, together with a mentor, they develop their individual study canvas or their study plan from the modules of all the study programs. They have the opportunity to become an “I-entrepreneur” and achieve their “business model you” (Clark et al., 2012).

4 The Importance of an Entrepreneurship Education Ecosystem

Developing successful EE that goes beyond the traditional formats and methods that only target the founding of start-ups in the business and management context requires a fundamental structural and cultural change in higher education. Universities have to commit to the concept of EE to allow for a holistic and interdisciplinary approach at various levels. How to change toward an entrepreneurship-friendly environment can be initiated and shaped has been examined in recent years within the framework of numerous projects (e.g., “EXIST Gründungskultur” of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action), best practice studies (e.g., Fichter et al., 2016; Halbfas, 2006; Kulicke, 2018; OECD, 2012; Stifterverband der deutschen Wissenschaft, 2012), and action plans (e.g., European Economic and Social Committee, 2006, 2020).

One way to capture the organizational setting for education-friendly entrepreneurship is by investigating EE ecosystems. The concept of ecosystems has been established in natural sciences, and is increasingly being applied to regional development, or clusters, with a focus on interorganizational relationship structures (Brush, 2014). An ecosystem can be seen as an integrated entity that organisms and their surviving environment create together via interactions in a given setting (Jinyun & Tao, 2016). The ecosystem metaphor is used to create a more specific understanding of the milieu in which entrepreneurship and EE are embedded, with activities fostering entrepreneurial educational progress within it (Toutain et al., 2019). This can be applied to various contexts of EE such as in schools or universities. While universities have been in the spotlight for their contribution to entrepreneurial ecosystems and economic development (Delanoë-Gueguen & Theodoraki, 2021), they can also be the key player in building an entrepreneurial (education) ecosystem—developing and strengthening the entrepreneurial competencies of students, as well as researchers and teachers from other disciplines. Recent work has started focusing on EE ecosystems to better understand how an optimum support structure can be derived, and how different stakeholders can get involved to influence the success of deriving and integrating EE (Bischoff et al., 2018; Wraae & Thomsen, 2019).

Toutain et al., 2019, for example, suggest a multidimensional model to analyze EE ecosystems with the following dimensions:

  • The learning framework (which refers to curriculum-related information).

  • The networks, connections, and relational proximity encouraged by the education (which refers to the connections between internal and external stakeholders and the way they are perceived).

  • The entrepreneurial culture of the ecosystem (which is based on key values that its actors perceive in the education).

  • The pedagogical solutions (which stimulate the learning dimension, such as (a mix of) traditional teaching, experiential methods, and learning by doing).

  • The motivation of actors to act or not act inside the ecosystem (which is an essential driving force for its development).

Liu et al. (2021) derive the following structure of an EE ecosystem (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
figure 2

Elements of an EE ecosystem. Source: Liu et al. (2021)

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The constituent elements of an EE ecosystem are here divided into two categories: units and factors. While units refer to the institutions, organizations, or stakeholders in the ecosystem, including colleges and universities, learners, educators, government, industry, and community, factors are the intermediaries that link the units of the ecosystem together, or the conditions and environment associated with the units, including the entrepreneurship curriculum, entrepreneurial activities and practices, organizational structure, resources, leadership vision, core faculty, and operating mechanism. Three independent functional subsystems are constituted by the key elements: teaching and innovation, support, and operation. Here it is not the university itself functioning as the center of the EE ecosystem, but the universities interconnecting these subsystems.

Some recommendations may be derived from research on EE ecosystems and related areas (Belitski & Heron, 2017; Boyer, 1990; Finkle and Deeds, 2001; Ghina, 2014; Gustomo & Ghina, 2017; Liu et al., 2021):

Creating the opportunity to teach (politics and management perspective)

Building an infrastructure that delivers possibilities for designing and implementing EE can be seen as the basis of all EE endeavors. This needs governmental support for EE that motivates university leaders to create an entrepreneurship-friendly atmosphere and build structures for designing and implementing innovative formats in this direction. It also needs support for the topic from university management, e.g., entrepreneurship should be included in all strategic considerations of research, teaching, and transfer (internal and public commitment). This should lead to an institutional anchoring of EE which clarifies the relevance of the topic for management, e.g., through a start-up center that reports directly to the university executive level, and at least one entrepreneurship professorship. Institutional implementation of the topic also needs long-term financial support for further developing EE, as well as motivation strategies and training structures. Finally, the university itself should also become more entrepreneurial on a meta-level, and at least consider the extent to which it adopts approaches from the “entrepreneurial university” concept.

Motivating and Enabling Teachers (Staff Perspective)

(Potential) EE teachers are often not trained to teach, as they often come from noneducational disciplines like management and business studies. Junior researchers will have to strike the right balance of research and teaching as they move toward professorship, even while the teaching of entrepreneurship classes will probably be left to nontenured track adjunct instructors (a trend that will be continually open to criticism). Whatever the case, the pedagogical expertise of university professors and staff will have to improve—especially with regard to entrepreneurship orientation. They will have to possess or acquire the competencies needed for educating future entrepreneurs, as well as the motivation to do so. Primarily busy with research, professors might not value teaching as much, and perhaps will not see any incentive for investing extra work into (further) developing EE. This will require an environment where EE is much more appreciated, with concrete incentive structures for teachers to invest in EE. This can include intrinsic motivation (e.g., by experiencing success and accompanying students’ development) or extrinsic motivation (e.g., in monetary form). This can also lead to more practitioners becoming involved in EE, such as successful entrepreneurs or entrepreneurship consultants. We additionally observe that EE research and its results have yet to be systematically included in deriving EE formats.

Motivating and Enabling Learners (Student Perspective)

Finally, an environment is needed that motivates and enables students to learn. Students here, although of course the people studying at universities, can also be researchers and other staff interested in entrepreneurial vocational training. Creating a positive attitude toward entrepreneurship and the motivation to develop entrepreneurial competencies can be positively influenced by several factors. One can be connected to having fun, and enjoying some form of positive peer pressure. The entrepreneurial ecosystem can include infrastructural support for experiencing entrepreneurial activity in a professional, entertaining way, e.g., in the form of maker spaces, creativity rooms, or students’ clubs. They can also be motivated by material or immaterial incentives to take part in transfer and entrepreneurship activities for students, employees, and academic staff. This could also include ECTS as well as free semesters or target agreements. In addition, interest in EE can be increased by showing its outcomes in the form of, e.g., successful entrepreneurs, stressing the possibility of founding a company as an alternative to being employed by someone. Participants in EE can also be motivated by the fact that it can have positive effects beyond founding a company, making clear the potential to innovate and operate in a solution-oriented manner. As repeatedly stated in this book, the contribution to social and environmental progress, in particular by developing entrepreneurial solutions (sustainability entrepreneurship) may play a significant role here. People who recognize the value of entrepreneurial thinking and acting within any private and job context may also show increased interest in entrepreneurial learning. If and how students learn, and what methods and formats work best, should be even more focused on by future EE researchers and practitioners.

5 Directions for Future Work

EE has the potential to change people’s mindset toward an entrepreneurial solution and action orientation. It as a result can have an enormous influence on the sustainability-oriented transformation of societies by aiming at educating students to become problem solvers, and enabling them to generate positive societal impacts by acting entrepreneurially in their private and professional contexts. This makes research on EE now more important than ever. Studies so far have focused on EE on the curriculum, program, and course levels and their impact (Fellnhofer, 2019; Liu et al., 2021). This is a good start, keeping in mind that there is still a need for additional academic work—especially regarding the outcome of EE, or in other words, on the measurement of EE’s success.

On the one hand, some authors criticize a focus on short-term, subjective impact measures such as entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions, rather than longer-term ones such as venture creation behavior and business performance, and call for future research to address this gap (e.g., Garavan & O’Cinneide, 1994; Henry et al., 2005; Pittaway & Cope, 2007). Long-term research with corresponding durations, or the empirical collection of specific figures with regard to economic and business aspects such as value creation, company growth, and innovative strength are scarce and should receive more attention (cf. Nabi et al., 2016). On the other hand, we argue that entrepreneurial activity can be far more than just founding businesses. As Gibb stated in 2002 (p. 258): “[P]erhaps the foremost [purpose of raising awareness about entrepreneurship] is to move the focus of entrepreneurship teaching and research away from the narrow business orientation toward the notion of the development of the enterprising person in a wide range of contexts and the design of organizations of all kinds to facilitate appropriate levels of ‘effective’ entrepreneurial behavior.” Or as stated by Ratten (2017), EE is valued not just for its ability to develop practical skills and knowledge, but to also obtain competencies to help communities and promote an improved quality of life.

Therefore, research should also broaden perspectives when measuring long-term effects, and add other forms of entrepreneurial action to what is studied, e.g., intrapreneurial work (which may be even more difficult to capture), or focus more on skills and knowledge acquisition as the most important prerequisite for entrepreneurial mindsets and behavior. As underlined in this chapter, more work is needed regarding competence acquisition and learning processes via EE in general, and sustainability-oriented EE in particular.

The results of research on EE can deliver substantial implications for practitioners. On the curricular and format level, it will derive insights about how EE can be arranged, and how teachers can be successfully educated to develop and implement matching EE offerings. Since promoting and implementing entrepreneurship programs entails a substantial investment of time and resources, it is critically important to take stock of what we currently know about the range of EE outcomes and provide benchmarks—not only for future research, but for practice as well. Insights into the results of EE also help design reward and motivation systems, e.g., favoring governmental decisions in supporting EE, or university management decisions when developing degree programs. Research on EE success is especially relevant for innovative teaching. Here, it is crucial that formats or methods are not just hyped up because they are new and fancy, but because they genuinely contribute to competence acquisition.

In addition, we identified EE ecosystems as a topic of growing relevance, with the successful development and implementation of EE requiring a supportive environment. Even though recent academic work has shown that scholars have begun to re-examine EE in higher education institutions from a system theory perspective, and are analyzing EE from an ecosystems perspective (Ács et al., 2014; Liu et al., 2021; Wraae & Thomsen, 2019), there is still a need for additional work here—empirical studies in particular. The question remains what a supportive EE ecosystem should look like, and what it needs to build and establish these structures.

The corona pandemic also requires a brief mention. There are several ways how it has influenced EE and research on it. Research reacted quickly to the corona outbreak, and has presented studies connecting the coronavirus and EE (Liguori & Winkler, 2020; Ratten & Jones, 2021). The challenges and barriers connected to corona open windows of opportunity for entrepreneurial solutions. This not only increases the value of entrepreneurial behavior (and thus EE), it also goes along with specific competencies entrepreneurs may need in this field, and which should be integrated into EE formats. In addition, along with the challenges we have experienced caused by the virus, and their related fears and restrictions, we have also acclimated to and depended on digital technologies in education. This leads to an increasing need for technical skills from teachers, as well as revised didactical concepts. On the one hand, this will cause difficulties and barriers for teachers, while perhaps reducing the quality of EE. On the other hand, it makes space for improvement in the form of didactical concepts, perhaps integrating more (international) stakeholders such as successful entrepreneurs and coaches. More and different research is needed to address this field and these developments. Where do digital formats make sense, and where do they not? How does knowledge development work via digital and interactive formats? Do certain formats benefit from technical advances, while others that, e.g., focus on personal skill development work better in workshop settings with personal contact? This discussion may also be broadened to include what competencies are (additionally) relevant for entrepreneurship, and how EE can take this into account. Digital competencies in particular may receive more academic attention in this context.

Academia has plenty of interesting and relevant work ahead of it. With our chapter and this book, we hope to initiate a discussion on how EE can contribute to educating future entrepreneurs who found (sustainable) companies, while also educating future change agents who possess the relevant competencies for transforming societies via their entrepreneurial actions. We request that researchers and practitioners follow up on our work, targeting issues regarding EE and its impact—on both the personal and societal levels.