Slides for the inaugural Coneeect training program for entrepreneurship educators www.coneeeect.eu

1. Educating
Entrepreneurship
Educators
Coneeect is an international network of universities that offers
training courses for academic entrepreneurship teachers to
improve the Entrepreneurship Education across Europe.
www.coneeect.eu
http://bit.ly/13R0aYz

3. The Experiential Essence of
Entrepreneurial Cognition:
How Understanding Entrepreneurial
Thinking Enhances Teaching &
Practice
Norris Krueger, PhD –
Entrepreneurship Northwest
July 23, 2013
We’re Not Teaching
Entrepreneurship
(or Shouldn’t Be!)
We Are Growing…
Entrepreneurial Brains

4. Sturgeon’s Law?
• Do you want to be:
• Above-average?
• Top 10%?
• Top 1%?
• Are you sure? 

5. Copernicus
Redux?
• Who invented kindergarten?
• A Copernican revolution

6. Three Revolutions?
• Converging today….
How do humans actually learn important stuff?
Practitioners leading the way
Online/blended tools
…and a 4th: moving from Novice to Expert
(don’t you want to create experts? Don’t you want to BE an
expert?)

7. Experts’
Obsessions
• Obsess over developing a truly
entrepreneurial mindset
– Not “stuff”
– Not “skills”
– Business models NOT plans
• Obsess over deep co-immersion with the
entrepreneurial community (a/k/a
“Ecosystem”)

8. What drives great things in…
• Startup Weekend, Lean Launchpad, TechStars?
•  exactly this
• Best technology commercialization programs?
 exactly this
• The most successful entrepreneurial
ecosystems? (e.g. Boulder or SV)
•  exactly this
• The A++ Entrepreneurship Programs
 exactly this

9. What the best programs do…
• 1. Focus on mindset.. but not as buzzword
• 2. Connecting students to ecosystem
• 3. Connecting ourselves even more deeply
• 4. And make connections two-way
• “Engagement” –> Immersion
• Immersion -> CO-immersion!
• ACTION!

11. Consider “lean startup”
• Validate biz model… sure, but also..
• Change mindset at a deep level
• Startup Weekend, TechStars
– Full immersion
• Peer support
• Personal reflection
– Co-Immersion with ecosystem
• Expert mentors
• Ecosystem feedback
– Who & what is guiding all this?
– And how do we do this… online?

12. Sorry… there’s homework 
• For now…
• When you think about the entrepreneurial mindset – not
skills, not info… Think DEEPER. How would you know
someone had a more expert mindset?
• What is different specifically? What are YOU
facilitating in your class or activity? (pick one)

13. WB Yeats
“Learning is not about filling a pail;
it’s about lighting a fire.”
(but where does the spark come
from?)

14. Two Ways to Learn
• Behavioristic
• - fill the bucket
• -define the buckets
•
• Constructivistic
• - light the fire (or fan it!)
• - assume knowledge structures evolve
• (often discontinuously)

15. Learners create their own
buckets…
– through…
• personal reflection,
• peer mentoring,
• expert mentoring
• ….based on authentic questions
• “Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do
with what happens.”
-Epictetus

16. Novice Expert
Entrepreneurial
Mindset
Critical Developmental
Experiences
Change in WHAT we
know (content)
Change in HOW we know it
(knowledge structures)
Change in Deep Beliefs

17. again…the best programs…
• 1. Focus on mindset.. but not as buzzword
• 2. Connecting students to ecosystem
• 3. Connecting ourselves even more deeply
• 4. And make connections two-way
• “Engagement” –> Immersion
• Immersion -> CO-immersion!

18. More ed psych!
Neergaard, Tanggaard, Krueger & Robinson (2013) Pedagogical
Interventions in Entrepreneurship: from behaviourism to
existential learning?

20. What we are should be doing
• Skills
• Knowledge
• Improving Intent
• Mindset
• Changing Deep
Beliefs
• Novice 
Expert
• Improving
ACTION

21. the “new” role of instructors

22. Accelerating Learning
• Problem-Based Learning (“authentic” questions)
• Two overlapping themes:
• IMMERSION – Action before thinking
• MENTORING – Learn the right lessons
– Expert mentors [and I do mean expert]
– Peer mentors
– Or THREE? Supportive ecosystem?
– Social infrastructure; cognitive infrastructure
– http://bit/ly/EcoSys

23. MORE homework 
• Remember that one change that contributes to a more
entrepreneurial mindset – what’s different?
• What CDE would YOU give learners the opportunity
to make that change?
• (You will never guess what I want to do this
afternoon…. )

24. …. If you do it right, you
will be called….
• A trouble-maker
• A bomb-thrower
• A boat-rocker
• A…. Well, what do they say in your country?
• But NO, you are not. You are a….
•Bildung Brandstifter!!

25. If you want to get involved
• in projects – research or applied?
• Norris Krueger:
– norris.krueger@gmail.com
– @entrep_thinking
– Facebook
– LinkedIn

26. Immersion/Mentoring
• Chalmers/Gothenburg
• NU Singapore
• The Foundry (Utah)
• TechStars (www.techstars.org)
• Startup Weekend
– www.startupweekend.org
• Lean Startup
– http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/successful-entrepreneurship-1

28. So what IS this
“entrepreneurial mindset” anyway??
• Crowdsourced list
• Thoughts? Which are the hardest to change?
– (More important for here... what can we measure?)
Seeing opportunities, yes, but…
• Seeing self as entrepreneur (role identity)
• Strategic thinking
• Dot-connecting / pattern recognition
• Effectual thinking (bricolage, improv)
• Optimist (attributional)
• Metacognition
• Counterfactual thinking
• Bias for action (vs. FoF!)
• Value creation as sine qua non (Market-pull?)