Abstract:

In Finland, there exist clear recommendations for entrepreneurship education (Arene, OECD), to higher education institutions (HEI’s) and HEI’s report investing in entrepreneurship teaching (LAB, Haaga-Helia, OAMK). This is a necessity for the future of work, as based on the estimates up to 80% of today's higher education students will employ themselves as entrepreneurs during their careers. This does not mean full-time entrepreneurship, but the working life is changing so that permanent full-time careers will be more and more be replaced by situations where income will come from several sources.

On a broader scale, this is also important for the whole of Finland. In Finland, companies have quite modest growth plans and investments lag other Nordic countries. Finnish companies should invest in intangible investments as their impact on job creation is the greatest (Sitra).

One of the most essential things for success in entrepreneurship is the right attitude. Some people are born with this attitude, but for those who are not, it needs to be taught. Instead of business management, the initial focus should be on the courage to experiment, try and fail, agile development with customers, and networking. Developing your own business idea alongside studies is also important, but you should not cling too much to your business idea in the early stages. The idea of an entrepreneurial individual or team often changes quite a lot during the process, the most important thing is to start.

What kind of learning methods do entrepreneurship education at the Finnish HEI’s offer for this?
Data for the article will be collected from two different sources with another researchers and will consist as follows:
1. Examination of public domain information from several HEI’s webpages in the Finnish context
2. Two set of theme-based interviews (8-12). The first group of interviewees are teachers who teach entrepreneurship, and the second group consists of students who established a business during their studies.

This will be an explorative case study utilizing data triangulation and offering viewpoints and analysis. The data will be analyzed following the principles of grounded theory. Both researchers will have their own viewpoint for the data, and they will do their analysis and write their article in cooperation but mostly independently. The presentation of the research is oral.

We have previously investigated (Latvala & Juvonen 2024, Focusing on the beginnings) the emphasis on the early stages of entrepreneurship and business collaboration in higher education, but the purpose of this study is to determine what kind of learning methods are actually used in teaching entrepreneurship and whether it meets the needs of students who have become entrepreneurs. The study focuses to Finnish HEI’s.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship education, learning methods, entrepreneurs.