Creativity Among Entrepreneurship Students: Comparing Engineering and Business Education

Journal article, 2006

As creativity is increasingly recognized as a vital component of entrepreneurship, researchers and educators struggle to reform enterprise pedagogy. To help in this effort, we use a personality test and open ended interviews to explore creativity among two groups of entrepreneurship masters students: one at a business school and one at an engineering school. The findings indicate that both groups had high creative potential, but that engineering students channelled this into practical and incremental efforts whereas business students were more speculative and had a clearer market focus. The findings are drawn on to make some suggestions for entrepreneurship education.