Abstract:

In the last few years there has been a growing interest in entrepreneurship education (EE) in Estonia, mostly expressed by governmental level and targeted to higher education institutions with regional colleges, local development agencies and creative industry incubators. The main issue regarding to EE in Estonia is that the development of methodology for implementing EE is yet in the inital phase and works on trial-and-error method. The focus of the matter therefore does not lie on interlinking EE and entrepreneurial activity, but on the contribution to the promotion of entrepreneurship by Estonian universities. So far, EE has been applied together with economics and its related fields. Linkages with other curriculas, usually wherein the real product and service development takes place, have mostly been weak and seldom.

In the current paper we analyse an EE case in Estonia, the University of Tartu Viljandi Culture Academy (UT VCA), where the first steps of bringing elements of EE into teaching processes and curriculas was made at the beginning of 2000s. Since 2013, as a part of their smart specialisation process directed to creative industries, UT VCA has started to create and implement the model of total EE within the framework of entrepreneurial university concept. The main purpose of the paper is to introduce the experiences of UT VCA regarding to piloting the aforementioned model.

The model itself consists of following principles:
- EE is compulsory to all students;
- EE includes practice - operating as an entrepreneur for at least a year;
- core subjects are linked to aspects of entrepreneurial process and usually carry the product or service development function;
- EE is mostly team-based and with preference of interdisciplinary teams.

33 students were involved for piloting the model since the September of 2013. The aim of the pilot project was to develop the content for university EE, simultaneously observing its impact for students and their entrepreneurial intentions. One of the objectives was to create real life situations or environments and to bring mentors or other specialists to students, so they could experience the optimal spectrum of entrepreneurship. Pilot project revealed several promising practices, but also some bottlenecks for implementing the total EE model. The experiment has approved that it is possible to implement the total EE model in the conservative academic environment, though it takes a lot of effort. Supervisors and students are convenient, but there are several lessons learned and suggestions for further development of the model.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship education, smart specialisation, creative industry, curricula design, entrepreneurship, interdisciplinary, synergy.