Abstract:

The current economic recession has become one of the greatest threats to the inclusion of graduates with higher education in the labor market. In response to this situation of unemployment or low employability, many of the Spanish institutions of higher education, both public and private, are devoting a lot of resources and efforts to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit of its main groups: students and professors. However, many strategies that are being planned are based on traditional pillars that are profoundly changing, such as the closed knowledge and pure business management.

The social and economic reality supposes a change in perception and values, that is, there should be a move from a management economy to an entrepreneurship economy. This change is still complicated due to the effect of the current legislation on entrepreneurship and the belief that the solution to employability is joining the civil service and not the creation of private business ventures. In this transition, the universities still see themselves as the great contributor and accumulator of knowledge, when, in the current context, new technologies have made knowledge a commodity and the role of the University must be another: it should act as a facilitator and certifier of knowledge.

However, to educate university students in entrepreneurial dynamic is not synonymous with strictly teaching formal and administrative aspects of entrepreneurship concepts or focus on management and business planning. These skills are necessary, but all the other abilities and competencies required to undertake should not be ignored. The skills that are transmitted must assume an interdisciplinary integration and complementarity, given the wide range of dimensions that embrace the concept of entrepreneurship. All learning methodology or the start of entrepreneurial activity should stimulate effort, promoting the ability to learn by oneself and with others and especially develop thinking and decision skills to facilitate autonomy, confidence and personal initiatives, that is to say the essential capabilities for every entrepreneur. (DNA of the entrepreneur).

Under this approach, the aim of this contribution is to show a methodology to transfer the values and skills needed to promote entrepreneurship among university students with the technological tools available (open platforms, virtual simulators, etc.) and also the new paradigms of teaching-learning based on cooperative learning, peer learning and the power of networking. This involves clarifying what the stages of every entrepreneurship are, as well as the sequence of skills and knowledge required in each of them.

Finally, a study is carried out comparing the context in which the entrepreneurial process develops and the characteristics of entrepreneurial activity, employing the data provided by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), with the characteristics of university students and initiatives for the improvement of entrepreneurship undertaken by the universities to reduce the still existing gaps, which could include Mentoring activities.

Keywords:

University Entrepreneurship, cooperative knowledge, network learning, business management.