Success factors in entrepreneurship education

Duration 2000–2003

Institute Institute for Markets and Strategy

Department Department of Strategy and Innovation

Thomas J. Allen (MIT), Christian Lüthje (TUHH Hamburg), Eric von Hippel (MIT)

Entrepreneurship and start-ups make a critical contribution to job creation, growth, and prosperity. Universities can serve as unique catalysts in the start-up landscape. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), for example, found that taken together, the businesses launched by MIT graduates and faculty were equivalent to the tenth largest economy in the world. Austria’s universities are also full of knowledge, ideas, and energy, but how can all this entrepreneurial potential be harnessed better? Critics often point to European universities’ poor track records in promoting entrepreneurship.

Universities can promote the entrepreneurial activities of students and graduates through application-oriented courses, interdisciplinary cooperation, positive role models, and the teaching of an entrepreneurial mindset.

The research project investigated how entrepreneurship education at universities should be designed to foster start-ups and innovation in practice. In particular, it focused on identifying the key factors that inspire students to make the leap into self-employment. Potential influencing factors were derived from a review of various theories of entrepreneurship. In the empirical part, the research team carried out a number of quantitative and qualitative studies, including at MIT. The study found that universities do in fact have a major influence on the entrepreneurial activities of their students and graduates, and went on to clarify how by identifying the most effective measures used. Decisive factors included applicationoriented entrepreneurship courses, targeted interdisciplinary cooperation, positive role models, such as successful entrepreneurs, and teaching an entrepreneurial mind-set. The research results have been disseminated at numerous international conferences and journals and received the 2004 WU Best Paper Award.

The success factors derived from the research formed the basis of WU’s entrepreneurship support system, which has rekindled the entrepreneurial spirit in Austria and contributed to the founding of more than 300 companies.

The research showed how entrepreneurship education should be designed to promote the entrepreneurial activities of students and graduates. These findings led to the establishment of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Entrepreneurship Center at WU (contributing to SDG 4 “Quality Education”). Both institutions focus on the success factors identified by the research: intensifying real-world learning, interdisciplinary cooperation, positive role models, and promoting an entrepreneurial mindset. The projects and courses offered by these institutions bring students into direct contact with practical partners, such as technology companies (e.g. Siemens, Magna, Airbus, ams), research institutions (e.g. TU Vienna, Fraunhofer, CERN), artistic and creative institutions (e.g. the University of Applied Arts Vienna), social institutions (e.g. Caritas, Red Noses), and successful entrepreneurs. This approach not

only familiarizes students with the methods used in the field of entrepreneurship and innovation; it also improves their soft skills and helps them build personal networks. These collaborations also provide partners with specific and practical solutions rooted in a solid, theoretical basis. The research helped to rekindle the entrepreneurial spirit in Austria, and made an important contribution to promoting the start-up activities of students and graduates and thus to the development of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Vienna (SDG 8 “Decent Work and Economic Growth” and SDG 9 “Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure”). Several hundred projects have already been carried out with startups and companies, and graduates and students have gone on to found more than 300 new businesses. These include well-known companies such as Shpock and Hokify as well as the nonprofit organizations Sindbad and Pioneer.

Literature review and empirical studies on entrepreneurship education

Success factors for entrepreneurship education

Foundation of the WU Entrepreneurship Center based on the success factors and increase of entrepreneurial activities of students and graduates