Track 2: Fostering Entrepreneurial Mindset

Entrepreneurship has been encouraged and embraced by many educational institutions. Governments have set entrepreneurship as a prior interest and worked to design a stimulating environment for fostering an entrepreneurial mindset among students. Many institutes and educators foster students to improve and develop their creative thinking and decision making. In point of fact, innovation is one of the factors which the European Commission (2008) believes that entrepreneurial education would develop in students’ mindset as a potential benefit economically. In addition to innovativeness and proactiveness the entrepreneurial orientation includes risk-taking, growth-orientation, autonomy, and competitive aggressiveness, which qualities also can be encouraged and learned. Some individuals, due to their psychological qualities or family background, have naturally more tendencies to entrepreneurial orientation and mindset.
Culture appears to play an important role in the business process, as cultural values determine the degree to which a society views entrepreneurship as an attractive or unattractive professional outlet. The level of entrepreneurship varies widely from country to country on the basis of culture and for example students’ international experiences may enhance entrepreneurial mindsets. Specific cultural dimensions are likely to strengthen or weaken the relationship between individual factors and entrepreneurial intent.
Therefore, empirical and conceptual research papers, or work-in-progress papers, or extended abstracts are welcomed.