Students creating Ventures in Higher Education: Nascent Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship Students
The submission portal for this special issue will open June 30, 2020.
Guest Editors:
Lise Aaboen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Roger Sørheim, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Kari Djupdal, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Aims and Scope
Entrepreneurship Education is a growing field of research, where most of the articles have been written after 2010. The literature about entrepreneurship education include descriptions of programs, initiations of programs (e.g. Phan, 2014; Harmeling and Sarasvathy, 2013; Pardede and Lyons, 2012; Stone et al., 2005). While most of the previous studies have been conducted in business schools, there is also an interest in other contexts such as engineering education (e.g. da Silva et al., 2015) and there was also a special issue about social entrepreneurship education in AMLE in 2012. The most common focus in entrepreneurship education is evaluations of programmes and courses. The programmes and courses tend to be described as being ‘about’, ‘for’, ‘through’, ‘in’ or ‘embedded’ entrepreneurship in order to specify the learning approach and objectives (Hannon, 2015; Pittaway and Cope, 2007, Robinson et al., 2016). The learning approaches vary from classroom lectures where the students are passive to approaches where the students are self-driving and the programmes may impact the student in learning to become an entrepreneur or entrepreneurial as well as context when for example a new venture has been started (Aadland and Aaboen, 2018). The majority of the programmes described and evaluated in entrepreneurship education literature focus on ventures as projects in courses or courses that prepare students for creating ventures rather than real venture creation conducted by students. A limited literature within entrepreneurship education focusing on Venture Creation Programs (e.g. Lackéus and Williams Middleton, 2015; Rasmussen and Sørheim, 2006) and extra-curricular activities (Claudia, 2014; Haneberg, 2019) currently mention real venture creation conducted by students.
Literature on venture creation in universities belongs to the literature stream about commercialization of university research, which is also a growing field of academic study (e.g. Rothaermel, Agung and Jiang, 2007; Vohora et al., 2004; Huyghe and Knockaert, 2015; Aldridge, Audretch, Desai and Nadella, 2014). Previous studies have focused on the creation, development and growth of firms (Mustar et al., 2006; Shepherd, 2015). Recent years have seen a shift in focus towards the inclusion of external factors (Autio et al., 2014), context (Welter, 2011) and processes (McMullen and Dimov, 2013; Fayolle, Jack, Lamine and Chabaud, 2016). Following this trend, concepts such as ecosystems (e.g. Clarysse et al., 2014; Oh et al., 2016) and embeddedness (Granovetter, 1985) have gained in popularity. Literature on venture creation in universities tend to focus on venture creation conducted by university employees (Lamine, Mian, Fayolle, Wright, Klofsten and Etzkowitz, 2016; Siegel and Wright, 2015) rather than students. Student entrepreneurship and student venture creation has only received limited scholarly focus (Bergmann et al., 2016; Beyhan and Findik, 2018; Boh et al., 2016). However, recent studies show that student ventures are a considerable contribution to the establishment of ventures from universities (Åstebro et al., 2012) and important contributors to university entrepreneurship (Gianiodis and Meek, 2019; Hayter et al., 2017; Wright et al., 2017; Lundqvist, 2014). Furthermore, the student activities connected to the venture creation seem to be an important contribution to making universities more entrepreneurial.
This special issue will focus on students creating real ventures at the university. The special issue will explore the special conditions for students creating ventures, such as their resources and networks connected to financing, legitimacy and knowledge. The special issue will also explore how learning should be designed and assessed for students that create ventures during higher education. More specifically, the special issue explores how we can ensure that the students do what they need to do in order to learn what they need to learn. Authors are encouraged to present and discuss their manuscript drafts at the
3E Conference in Trondheim 13-15 May,2020.
Possible Topics
The Guest Editors encourage submissions of theoretical and empirical contributions investigating student venture creation. Possible topics include:
Venture creation as part of entrepreneurship education: Real venture creation as part of entrepreneurship education poses several challenges compared to traditional entrepreneurship education stemming from required involvement of activities outside a controlled learning space (Nabi, Fayolle, Lyon, Krueger and Walmsley, 2017), as well as inherit tensions from the combination real venture creation with education involving curriculum, student assessment and specific learning objectives (Lackéus and Williams Middleton, 2015; Hägg and Kurczewska, 2016; Neck and Greene, 2011). So far, only limited attention has aimed to address the specific challenges of entrepreneurship education emphasizing venture creation.
Venture creation as part of extra-curricular activities: Extracurricular initiatives are different from entrepreneurship education programs in that they are voluntary and usually student-led (Preedy and Jones, 2017). Some extracurricular initiatives have an educational objective while others support students with a new venture idea that wish to launch and grow. Student venture incubators have grown in number during recent years (Guerrero, Urbano, Fayolle, Klofsten and Mian, 2016; Wright, Siegel and Mustar, 2017) and thereby provide a particularly interesting context for exploring student venture creation.
Student-driven ventures as part of the university eco-system: Entrepreneurs face liabilities of newness. Students may face additional liabilities of newness due to their lack of network in the industry. Furthermore, the students are nascent entrepreneurs with limited experience carrying out most of the tasks for growing their venture for the first time. Moreover, the student status mean that they have access to resources ‘for free’ at the universities but simultaneously the student status means that they may not be perceived as ‘serious’, ‘professional’ and as real ventures by their potential business partners. The special conditions of being a student creating a real venture deserves more scholarly attention.
Results from student venture creation: Recent studies show that student ventures are a considerable contribution to the establishment of ventures from universities (Åstebro et al., 2012) and important contributors to university entrepreneurship (Gianiodis and Meek, 2019; Hayter et al., 2017; Wright et al., 2017; Lundqvist, 2014). However, more studies of results from student venture creation are needed in order to get a better understanding of how the venture creation contribute to student learning, university entrepreneurship and graduate activities. In particular longitudinal studies following the students’ ventures and/or the students after graduation are particularly encouraged.
SubmissionsPapers should be submitted via the journal’s online submission system available through the journal homepage. When submitting please choose the special issue: “Students creating ventures” as the article type from the drop down menu. All papers must follow the guidelines outlined by the journal for submission, available on the
journal's page.For any questions interested authors can contact the corresponding guest editor: Lise Aaboen (
lise.aaboen@ntnu.no)
Submission deadline: 30th September 2020
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Short Biographies of the Guest Editors
Lise Aaboen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Lise Aaboen is Professor of technology-based entrepreneurship at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. Her research interests include incubators, new technology-based firms, entrepreneurship education and early customer relationships. She has published in a range of journals, including Technovation, Industrial Marketing Management and Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management.
Roger Sørheim, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Roger Sørheim is Professor of entrepreneurship at Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Nord University. The primary focus in his research related to early-stage finance and commercialization of technology. Sørheim has published in a number of peer reviewed journals including Journal of Small Business Management, Venture Capital, Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship and Regional Development and Technovation.
Kari Djupdal, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Kari Djupdal is Senior Researcher at Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She holds a PhD from Nord University and has practical experience as an analyst of large data sets. Her research interests include entrepreneurial mindset, entrepreneurial passion, sustainability as well as quantitative studies of small firms and entrepreneurship students.