A relatively small proportion of students have aspirations to start their own business, but enterprise education should not be seen as only having relevance to these few. Enterprise opportunities within the curriculum provide benefits to all students because ‘setting up an enterprise’ and ‘being enterprising’ are not the same thing. Having opportunities to be enterprising develops a rich suite of skills. The University of Leicester – Enterprising Leicester webpages provide a helpful summary of these skills, based on Gibb (2005) Towards the Entrepreneurial University.
| Skills | Attributes | Behaviours |
|---|---|---|
| intuitive decision making with limited information | sense of belief in self | seeks and takes opportunities |
| coping with uncertainty and complexity | strong sense of independence | takes initiative |
| building know-how and trust relationships | goal/achievement orientated | builds and develops networks |
| creative approach to problem solving | builds own know-how and trust relationships | assesses and takes risks |
| negotiation capacity | commitment to see things through | holistic management of situations |
| selling/persuasive capacity | sense of ownerships over problems/actions | thinks strategically |
The production and presentation of new ideas is at the heart of academic disciplines and so on a fundamental level, doing academic work should be creative process when done well. However, we might want to ask ourselves if students feel like they are being creative when they write an essay or a report? Do our standard teaching and assessment practices feel creative to our students? The new generation of students – ‘Generation K’– value things they can actively create / co-create. They do this all the time, aided by their use of digital technology. We ourselves therefore might want to think creatively and entrepreneurially about how we might move our ‘typical’ practices on, in order to introduce creativity, enterprise, and indeed any aspect of employability, into our curriculum.
The University provides a wide offer on enterprise activities and support that students can get involved with. We can help by knowing what is available and encouraging students, when possible, to get involved. For example the Accelerate workshops and Research and Innovation all deliver sessions on how students can become self-employed and start a business. The Cube offers advice, funding and support to businesses, freelancers and the self-employed, with services open to students from all schools at all levels of study, as well as graduates.
