Abstract:

An entrepreneurial mindset is increasingly essential in navigating long-term structural changes to work and to leaders who are working to empower entrepreneurs and build entrepreneurial ecosystems and entrepreneurial communities (Fortunato, et al., 2022), particularly in smaller, rural communities disrupted by the pandemic (Räisänen, et al., 2021). Entrepreneurship education embodies methods of thinking, acting, identifying opportunities, and approaching problems that enable people to manage change, adjust to new conditions and take control of actualizing personal goals, aspirations, and even dreams. Indeed, small businesses that significantly leveraged digital technologies recovered more quickly from pandemic disruptions (Connected Commerce Council, 2021).

This presentation describes a twenty-year social entrepreneurship program at a liberal arts college designed to facilitate an entrepreneurial mindset and deliberate practice in college students, focusing on the highly economically distressed counties of Central Appalachia. The program recently partnered with local businesses and government in rural communities to develop cultural and adventure tourism opportunities. Indeed, small rural travel and tourism businesses that extensively leverage digital technologies recovered more quickly from the disruption.

Summer 2021 students worked to build an interactive digital map for a newly developed US-designated transcontinental cycling route. Such maps allow cyclists to identify local businesses they can utilize for dining, lodging, and other hospitality services when visitors plan trips. Summer 2022 students extended the model for a more comprehensive set of visitors, including extreme adventurers (hikers, rock climbers, trail runners, mountain bike riders and canoeing/kayaking and white-water enthusiasts), majestic nature lovers and devotees, and Appalachian culture, arts, crafts, and music fans. As part of their entrepreneurship training, students researched local businesses along the trails/routes and completed visitor customer discoveries. Students worked in groups on various sections of the roads and trails to identify and categorize these businesses, obtain GPS coordinates, and create an inventory of each business's digital footprint. A beta version of an interactive digital map using open-source Mapbox software from points of interest, small businesses' Internet websites, and social media data. In addition to learning how to design an entrepreneurship course that blends curricular and co-curricular elements, the conference audience members will directly experience how design thinking and an interdisciplinary method are utilized to approach creative problem-solving in the classroom and the field. Participants will learn how to leverage community partnerships in an active learning and social entrepreneurship context.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial mindset, active learning, deliberate practice, tourism, digital asset inventory, design thinking, customer discovery.