Imagine there’s no competitions: a detox re-description of entrepreneurship and its education

Book chapter, 2025

Imagine entrepreneurship education with no business competitions, no student business ideas, no money-making challenges and no billionaire role models. Could it really exist? This chapter aims to falsify the established view of entrepreneurship and its education through a research-informed investigation of its antithesis. Many alternative approaches have been identified. Teachers could let students cooperate with external people instead of competing with each other. Teachers could let students take engaged action instead of getting stuck in ideation. Teachers could let the real world inspire students instead of letting celebrity entrepreneurs come in to share their war stories. Such a change could broaden the impact and relevance of entrepreneurship education. How teachers present what it means to be entrepreneurial has a big impact on who, and how many, choose to pursue an entrepreneurial career. Stereotypic views of entrepreneurship and one-size-fits-all pedagogy make many students conclude: “Entrepreneurship is not for me.”