Abstract:

This article focuses on the fact that entrepreneurship is a key factor in economic growth especially in times of economic crisis. There is now a worldwide consensus among economists, business leaders and politicians that the link between education and entrepreneurial activity is a key factor to economic growth. This enables us to understand why some regions or nations demonstrate much higher growth rates than those whose management, institutional arrangements and national policy hinder entrepreneurship. That is why fostering an entrepreneurship mindset is an important role for kindergartens and schools.
The article is mainly theory-based but has also links to a project in which the focus was entrepreneurial learning and fostering an entrepreneurial mindset. The focus has been put on attitudes shaped at an early age to foster this entrepreneurial mindset. The methods used are hermeneutics, analyzing literature, interviews and examining written sources.
The results show that entrepreneurship should be seen as a human resource developed through life long learning processes. Children have to learn, early in their lives, that they can take part in a process of creating activities and enterprises themselves. In this way, children will learn that both kindergartens and schools have an important role to play in society and they will assimilate fundamental attitudes about active learning in a contest of real work, an entrepreneurial mindset. By use of this method children will also be highly motivated for learning. To enable enterprise-based learning, kindergartens and schools can be organised in many flexible ways connected to local resources and local partners.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial learning, mindset, local culture, education, innovation, pupil's enterprise.