European Journal of Education, Vol. 43, No.

4, 2008

Incorporating Student-Centred Learning in Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education

SASKIA J.M. HARKEMA & HENK SCHOUT Introduction Why are innovation and entrepreneurship education so important in the realm of national economies? Innovation holds the key to the continuity and growth of companies (Hage, 1999), whilst entrepreneurship holds the key to economic growth in a country. It is therefore obvious that national governments are spending a great deal of money and paying attention to the stimulation of entrepreneurial and innovative behaviour. While entrepreneurship has to do with the entrepreneurs ability to see opportunities and transform them into an interesting proposition, innovation refers to the act of materialising that opportunity in a change of some sort, e.g. a product, a service, an organisational change or a new process. Innovation thus refers to the ability of a company to renew itself, adapt to changing circumstances and in that process alter its procedures and structures to create a dynamic environment in which to work. Without innovation, a company reverts to inertia and will eventually be unable to survive. Given the importance of both phenomena, much effort is geared towards implementing entrepreneurship and innovation as topics within curricula at universities of all sorts. The objective is to stimulate students to start their own business and develop knowledge and competences as to how to do that. In the Netherlands, there are several initiatives that purposefully try to embed entrepreneurship as a subject within a diversity of professions, varying from industrial management to behavioural science and business studies. Despite all these efforts, few students decide to follow a career as an entrepreneur, compared to other countries, especially the US.This partly has to do with national culture aspects like a risk-avoiding attitude and uncertainty avoidance. And it is well-known that many endeavours of entrepreneurs end up in failure before nally becoming a success. It is therefore a challenge to change the behaviour of students and give them enough tools to have a fair chance of becoming an entrepreneur or innovation manager in an existing rm. This challenge has been picked up at The Hague University of Professional Education. This article deals with the following issues. First, some denitions of learning are given. This is important to introduce the concept of learner-centred approach. Secondly, an instruction-based learning approach is opposed to a learner-centred approach based on a constructivist paradigm as dened by Baets (1998). Subsequently, a brief review is given of the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation and the different perspectives on both phenomena. We then elaborate on the programme developed at the University of Professional Education in The Hague. We conclude with the practical consequences of implementing such a
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programme and review the pitfalls and potentials of this pedagogical approach in stimulating entrepreneurial behaviour and the opportunities discerned. So far, more than 150 students have followed the programme. The Dynamics of Learning The issue of whether being innovative and entrepreneurial can be taught is highly relevant, given its economic importance. There are those who contend that being an entrepreneur is more of a talent or an innate aspect than a competence that can be acquired. In our view, entrepreneurship can certainly be taught, but it depends largely on the pedagogical approach and the context in which teaching and learning take place. It is a competence than can be acquired. Competences in this context refer to a combination of skills, knowledge and attitude (Kessels, 1999). Iandoli and Zollo (2006) dene them as the capability of an entrepreneur to acquire resources, control the internal/external relationship, integrate these resources with an action plan aimed at achieving specic objectives and implementing a consistent monitoring of a chaotic and complex set of very different processes. So the problem-solving capability of an entrepreneur is important to achieve objectives. This is an important starting point in the denition of the competences students are expected to develop. In order to explain our point of view, we must elaborate on two important aspects, namely: what does one need to learn, how can what one needs to know best be taught and learned, and how far are the environment and pedagogical approach supportive for learning. So besides knowledge, problem-solving skills and an attitude conducive to change seem to be important. In the following paragraphs, we start with denitions of learning and an explanation of learning paradigms, since they form the context wherein students must operate. Some Denitions of Learning Learning starts at the individual level. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, learning means: to acquire knowledge of a subject, or skill, as a result of study, experience or teaching. So learning has to do with the acquisition of knowledge and skills according to this denition and with teaching, studying and going through experiences. When speaking of learning, a clear distinction is generally made between a cognitive approach and a more behaviourist approach. The classical denition of learning is that it is a change in behaviour as a result of experience or practice. The emphasis lies on behaviour and not necessarily on the transfer of cognition. A more recent denition is the one by Kim (1993) that says that learning is the acquisition of knowledge. He makes a distinction between (a) the acquisition of know-how and (b) the acquisition of know-why. The rst refers to the physical ability of an individual to produce some action and the latter to the ability to articulate a conceptual understanding of an experience. Other authors, such as Argyris and Schn (1978), dene learning as the development of knowledge. They distinguish between three phases in the learning process, namely: 1. Single-loop learning individual learning takes place when errors are detected and corrected and individuals carry on with their behaviour it
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has merely been improved. According to Dodgson (1993), single-loop learning can be compared with activities that add to the individual knowledge base, individual competences or routines without altering the fundamental nature of ones activities and behaviour. Senge (1990) speaks of adaptive learning in this context. 2. Double-loop learning occurs when, in addition to detection and correction of errors, an individual questions and modies existing norms, procedures, policies, and objectives. Double-loop learning involves changing ones knowledge base, individual competences or routines. 3. Deutero learning occurs when an individual learns how to carry out singleloop and double-loop learning. It takes place at the highest aggregate level, where the way of learning is questioned and adapted. Fiol & Lyles (1985) dene learning as the process of improving actions through better understanding and knowledge. Baets & Van der Linden (2000) dene it as the process whereby knowledge is created by the transformation of experience. Learning is not seen as an abstract process but it is contextual: it occurs while the experience is taking place, so that it can be applied immediately. This is an interesting point of view when it comes to teaching students a topic such as entrepreneurship, especially against the background of the question raised whether entrepreneurship can be taught and how it should be taught. According to this view, one can only learn within a context. In summary, it can be said that learning refers to a change in behaviour as a result of an experience an individual goes through. One has learned when one has developed a new understanding or a new capacity which becomes manifest in (changed) behaviour. As mentioned earlier, learning has a cognitive which affects individual mental models and a behavioural element. Denitions of learning largely depend on the perspective from which the phenomenon is regarded and the level of analysis. These two are connected. Two distinct learning paradigms can be discerned on which teaching and learning are primarily based. They are discussed in the next paragraphs. Learning Paradigms When it comes to learning paradigms in general two strands of thought are dened in literature and are reected in the afore mentioned denitions of learning: a behaviourist one and a cognitive one. A paradigm denes the framework wherein research is carried out and sets the boundaries of what and how to research a specic social phenomenon. The emphasis of behaviourism lies on observable indicators that learning has actually taken place. The father of behaviourism is J.B. Watson (18781958), who denes learning as a sequence of stimulus response actions in observable cause and effect relationships. The best-known example is Pavlovs experiment. Skinner developed Watsons ideas further. According to Skinner, voluntary or automatic behaviour is strengthened or weakened by the immediate presence of reward or punishment. Whereby the assumption is that new learning occurs as a result of positive reinforcement and old patterns are abandoned as a result of negative reinforcement. At the individual level, learning is regarded as a change of behaviour resulting from changing stimulus-response mechanisms (Kolb, 1984).
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Contrary to this view, cognitivism places the emphasis on mental processes. Behaviourists do not deny the existence of these processes; they simply regard them as an unobservable indicator of learning, which cannot be established empirically. Cognition is seen as an important driving and explanatory force to understand behaviour. Jean Piaget (18961980), for instance, regarded human development in terms of progressive stages of cognitive development. These four stages sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operations characterise the cognitive abilities that are necessary at each stage to construct meaning. Generally speaking, a clear line separates the behaviourists from the cognitivists. There are, however, alternative views on learning, which also try to link individual cognition with organisational behaviour. Leroy and Ramantsoa for instance argue (1997) that a strict separation between behaviour and cognition is constructed and Nicolini and Meznar (1995; p. 738) argue that the distinction between behaviour and cognition is inadequate to serve as a basis to dene organisational learning. Furthermore, Baets (1998) defends the situational character of learning. In this view the emphasis is changed from learning as a transfer mechanism to learning as a construction mechanism that starts at the individual level.This idea that learning is a construction process is laid down in ideas on constructivism. Constructivism is an example of a learning theory that focuses on the mental processes that construct meaning, whereby cognition is regarded as situated. According to Walker (2003), the constructivist approach assumes that individuals impose meaning on the world. Constructivists believe that all humans have the ability to construct knowledge in their own minds through a process of discovery and problem-solving. They focus on the learner as the one responsible for learning, and they assume that learning takes place via a process of learning-by-doing or experimentation and practice (McDermott, 1973; Baets & Van der Linden, 2000). The main consequence of a constructivist paradigm is that knowledge and learning cannot be isolated from practice and situation (Seely Brown & Duguid, 1991). Whereas transfer models isolate knowledge from practice, constructivism primarily sees learning as a process of social construction. From this perspective, learners can only develop understanding of a wide range of aspects through interaction. Reecting on the practice of teaching and education at knowledge institutes, one cannot but conclude that the instruction-based approach to learning prevails. In a learner-centred approach, learning cannot be isolated from practice, which implies that learning in a classroom setting when it comes to entrepreneurship is far from ideal. To develop understanding and a capacity in this case being entrepreneurial and innovative a situational approach is to be preferred to a classroom setting. The programme developed in The Hague is based on ideas of constructivism and the premises upon which it rests. Competence-based thinking basically likewise ts within a constructivist paradigm, which places the individual at the centre of the learning process. Competence-based thinking starts from the assumption according to Van der Sijde (2006) that the I, as a holistically functioning and learning being, uses his or her knowledge, skills and attitude situationally in an integral way, while reecting on the process and the results, subsequently translating these reections into continuously changing and improving competences. The consequences for the design of a curriculum are farreaching. Van der Sijde phrases it as follows: the design of the curriculum, which had
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always been owned by the school organisation, was transferred to the owners of the learning process, the student. In close cooperation with the work eld, being the owner of a rich learning environment the student learns to match his personal curriculum and the corporate curriculum. We will speak more about this at a later stage. First, we shall elaborate further on the differences between an instruction-based and learnercentred approach.

Instruction-based Learning versus a Learner-centred Approach The teacher-centred approach is primarily concerned with the transmission of knowledge. According to McDonald (2002) the work of teachers and lecturers depends upon the abilities, skills and efforts of their students. Student achievement is at the forefront of teacher-centered curriculum, but teachers are driven to meet accountability standards and often sacrice the needs of the students to ensure exposure to the standards. Teachers in a teacher-centred environment focus more on content than on student processing. Essential in a learner-centred approach is that the diversity of learning characteristics of all learners are taken into account with specic emphasis on low-performing learners. According to McCombs (1997), the focus in a learner-centred approach is on individual learners experiences, perspectives, backgrounds, talents, interests, capacities, and needs. She denes learner-centred, from a research-based perspective, as a foundation for clarifying what is needed to create positive learning contexts to increase the likelihood that more students will experience success. To create an effective learning situation, McCombs says that three conditions need to be met: 1) The learning environment should facilitate the exploration of meaning. Learners must feel safe and accepted, and they must understand the risks and rewards of seeking knowledge and understanding. The environment must create a setting where involvement, interaction and socialisation are combined with a business-like approach to accomplishing a certain task. 2) Learners must be given frequent opportunities to confront new information and experiences in their search for meaning and understanding.Those opportunities should not be provided in a passive receptive form by merely giving information 3) New meaning and understanding should be acquired through a process of personal discovery. These methods should be tuned to the individual and adapted to the learners own style and pace of learning. Taking these considerations into account, a programme was developed at The Hague University of Professional Education consisting of 20 weeks full-time work for students throughout the university. Against the background of growing concerns that the number of students who choose to become entrepreneurs should increase, a setting was created in which it is expected that students perform better, are stimulated to search for knowledge and understanding in order to be able to take the step to become an entrepreneur or agent of change in an existing organisation. From the perspective of the content of the programme an important
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decision was taken to integrate innovation with entrepreneurship since, in practice, these domains are not separated. In the next section our view on both phenomena is explained. Innovation and Entrepreneurship It was mentioned earlier that innovation holds the key to the continuity and growth of a company (Hage, 1999), whilst entrepreneurship holds the key to economic growth within a country. What is meant by innovation? In most cases, it refers to an invention, which can either be a new product or service. Innovation processes refer to the stages an invention has to go through before it is launched on the market (Utterback, 1994). Underlying the development of new products or services is an innovation process, which, in many cases, is embedded in a model. Innovation mostly starts with an idea and is pushed further by developments in R&D in combination with market knowledge (Mowery & Rosenberg, 1994). Innovation and entrepreneurship are closely intertwined. The latter has to do with the ability of an individual usually the owner of a company, the entrepreneur to see opportunities and translate these into an interesting proposition. This translation process usually results in an invention, which subsequently again has to be translated into an interesting commercial proposition. It is this last phase which is the most important and refers to the innovation process. In start-up companies the entrepreneur is often also the inventor and the one responsible for bringing the invention to the market, so he is also the innovator. Once a company has been started up, an entrepreneur has to remain innovative in order to safeguard the continuity of his company. He has a number of options: he can opt for incremental innovations small alternations or improvements to an already existing product, or he can opt for a radical innovation a completely new solution to a problem. An example of the latter is the CD, which marked the end of the LP. Whatever his action as an entrepreneur he should consider the innovation life cycle (see Figure 1).

Revenue

Time

Disruptive

Application Product

Process Operational

Marketing Business Model

Structural

Figure 1. Innovation life cycle (adapted from Geoffrey Moore (2004))

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Both entrepreneurship and innovation start at the individual level.Tidd (2005) points out that this process starts with scanning the environment and searching for opportunities which might be translated in an interesting proposition. Once a company starts to grow, the role of the entrepreneur changes.Whereas in the start-up phase, the invention the phase creation and innovation process the phase of commercialising the idea are emphasised, in a later stage the managerial competences of the entrepreneur grow in importance. In developing an educational programme it is important to take these processes into account and be aware of: the different stages an innovation goes through the different roles required in the innovation process the importance of being entrepreneurial and innovative simultaneously.

These are some of the assumptions that lay at the heart of the programme developed at the The Hague University of Professional Education. From a research perspective, the main questions we sought to nd an answer for were: which competences do we need to teach students to be successful, how can we best teach them and how can we create a setting in which they learn to become entrepreneurial and innovative? In summary, we are interested in individual competences for innovative and entrepreneurial behaviour, the pedagogical approach and the environment we should create to get the most out of students. An Education Programme in Innovation and Entrepreneurship One of the rst steps was to set up an expert centre in which the importance of an active participation of both teachers and business partners in the education of students was recognised. The idea is that this centre of excellence should act as a change agent by linking internal and external stakeholders around three central themes: education, research and environment (see Figure 2).

Education

Research

Entrepreneurship

Environment

Figure 2. Overview of the three themes for the Centre of Excellence in Innovation & Entrepreneurship

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The centre is a location outside the school which aims to create an environment in which students work and are directly confronted with the external world instead of working within the safe haven of a school-setting. Another important decision was related to the content of the programme: the integration of innovation and entrepreneurship in the curriculum since practice shows that these domains are not separated as is suggested in the academic domain. In our view, the need for continuous change and renewal (innovation) as the central issue in entrepreneurship does not only relate to timely deployment of new technological applications, it also requires rethinking and reworking internal processes the innovation of strategy, policy, marketing and distribution, the organisation and its management. Consequently, entrepreneurship and innovation are not regarded as the exclusive responsibility of the independent entrepreneur; equal demands need to be met by individual employees in larger organisations. As a consequence, the technical aspects of entrepreneurship and innovation are not solely taken into account, but also the non-technical aspects of innovation: creating an entrepreneurial climate and an entrepreneurial mentality, facilitating experiments and learning, enhancing an organisations adaptive abilities and ability to learn, searching new ways of organising the innovation process, balancing the need for individual autonomy with corporate strategy and nding the right mix between exploiting and exploring. The programme is aimed at developing entrepreneurial and innovative competences. Earlier, competences were dened as a combination of knowledge, problem-solving skills and individual attributes. The attributes and skills refer to the capability to deal with problems and solve them and in the process nd solutions to achieve the dened objectives. Success in this sense is the ability to be able to meet ones own objectives. A number of steps were also taken concerning the students. Participating in the minor programme requires motivation on behalf of the student to become active as an innovative entrepreneur. The decision to enrol has to t with the students personal development plan and be complementary to his Major programme. To this end, a specially devised psychological test and an intake interview are held to identify problem areas and help set targets. The test is developed in collaboration with local psychological consultants and focuses on a number of aspects like: thinking capacity, personal qualities and dedication. The interview also deals with ones personal ambition and commitment to create added value. From the start of the Minor programme, the student works in a separate area of the Centre on his own idea, following one of three optional routes (see Figure 3):

Idea

concept

feasibility

development

introduction

continuity

Figure 3. Overview of the overlap in 3 optional routes within the Minor programme
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Each of these routes is supported by a competence prole: 1. for the feasibility route, the successful student demonstrates that he can operate as a professional innovative entrepreneur in an (inter)national environment by recognising or developing a breakthrough idea and by making innovative suggestions and translating these into technological, commercial and organisational specications. 2. for the business plan route, the successful student demonstrates that he can operate as a professional innovative entrepreneur in an (inter)national environment by methodically analysing a business process or a productmarket combination in order to implement innovations leading to organisational results and customer satisfaction. 3. for the contingency route, the successful student demonstrates that he can operate as a professional innovative entrepreneur in an (inter)national environment by anticipating developments and analysing risks inuencing the position and opportunities of his organisation and by making innovative suggestions and translating these into technological, commercial and organisational specications leading to better organisational results and greater customer satisfaction. This competence-based programme is tailor-made to individual student demand. The programme follows two routes: one aimed at developing knowledge and skills, and another aimed at developing a personal view on own strengths and weaknesses and dening requirements how to overcome them in the process. Students individual experience is taken as a starting point and used to develop a vision of the concepts of innovation and entrepreneurship. Students report on the route they have taken towards their personal goal. This is a so-called innovation-experience report they have to write during the course of the 20 weeks that the programme takes. Student output is thus twofold. On the one hand they have to write a report in which they demonstrate that they have been able to carry their idea forward and write a feasibility plan, or a business-plan. On the other, they have to write an innovation experience report in which they report on their own individual learning process and the pitfalls and problems they have encountered along the road. The minor programme (30 European Credits) starts with a three-week introduction period during which some basic themes are discussed, after which the student develops his own individual route (see Figure 4). Personal coaching throughout the programme is provided by an experienced member of the Centre as well as a representative of one of the business partners with hands-on entrepreneurial experience, or someone from the Chamber of Commerce, branch organisations or the Dutch CBI. The introductory period leads to a personal development plan (PDP), including aims, targets, planning and deliverables. An important aspect of this PDP for the student is to indicate his individual demands and requirements for training and schooling. The idea is that the student will acquire the knowledge necessary to complete the programme and that in the process he will gain the necessary knowledge required for the further development
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Introduction Personal Coaching

1. Feasibility
Simulation Game Introductory Vision & Assessment

PDP

Test & Intake interview

2. Introduction

3. Contingency
Business Partners Networking Activities

Figure 4. Overview of the Minor programme

of his individual trajectory. This ts with the assumptions underlying a constructivist approach, which breaks with the idea that knowledge is transferred and that individuals within a group follow a similar learning curve. Various specialists and experts are called in to support the process. Because of the multidisciplinarity of the group, these demands are diverse, ranging from business organisational problems, via marketing aspects through to nancial queries or questions on industrial property rights. Students with a major in Commercial Economics have previously developed rather different competences than students with a background in any of the Accounting, Social Sciences, Health Care or Engineering majors. Within this set-up this is not a problem but forms the added value of the programme. Monitoring and tracking of activities are supported by a digital e-merge portfolio (based on the Blackboard environment). Personal coaching is supported by peer review sessions and networking activities with the business partners. Assessment of activities is based on the students nal product in any one of the three optional routes, on their personal portfolio and on the innovation experience report, supported by a body of knowledge. Assessment criteria to ensure the appropriate level of higher education and to ascertain national accreditation have been devised in collaboration with the Universitys Department of Educational Development. Pitfalls and Potentials of a Constructivist Approach On the basis of an evaluation of the programme we were able to identify some pitfalls and potentials. Evaluations of the rst two programmes have led to various adaptations and improvements and also some interesting insights on the role of competences, the pedagogical approach and the learning environment. Pedagogical Approach, Individual Competences and the Environment The pedagogical approach is the most fundamental aspect of the programme. As mentioned in earlier sections, it was developed on the basis of ideas of constructivism and learner-centred theories. This implies that besides some lectures at the start of the programme, each student denes his or her own trajectory on the basis
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of the problems encountered along the road. The learning process is a process of personal discovery. The idea is that an entrepreneur works in this way and that his ability to deal with problems is one of his important competences. On the basis of the evaluation, one of the most important things that came to light was that some students have great difculty in dealing with what they perceived as lack of direction in comparison to a traditional classroom setting. As a consequence, the coaching instead of teaching of the student is one of the most important aspects of the programme. It is a mechanism which is crucial in the learning process and which invites the students to search for solutions to tackle a problem. Within the programme, students had two kinds of coaches. Both support students in achieving their learning objectives. One coach comes from a company and has the role of confronting students with real-life situations. The other comes from the university and guides the learning process of the student. All in all, the student is the director of his or her own learning trajectory. On the basis of an evaluation which was rst carried out in December 2005 and followed-up in June 2006 some of the following aspects came to light: With this approach students do not work in a classroom setting but are stimulated to work together in an open space to take advantage of the multidisciplinary character of the group in which they work. Students show difculty in taking the initiative to work together and say that this is due to the fact that they are not used to working in this way. In order to overcome this problem in the subsequent programmes, students were given a group assignment to stimulate group dynamics and make them responsible for a group project. The rst group assignment concerned a project called Sharing Success, an initiative by a group of companies at fundraising via an event. The students had to think together of ways of selling tables for the event their rst step in experiencing what entrepreneurship means in real-life Students showed a lack of experience with project management, which is a skill that in this setting is very important for the success of their own project. In a classical setting students know beforehand what is expected of them while in this setting they have to manage their own project like in a real-life situation. The minor is accessible for students of a broad range of educational programmes, which means that the students have great diversity in backgrounds. Participants in the minor had to adapt to this situation and had to learn that instead of reverting to the teacher for knowledge they could also revert to fellow students. A technical student could thus prot from a marketing student and vice versa. One of the problems with the pedagogical approach and challenges of this programme is that its quality has to be safeguarded. Giving students a lot of room to design their own programme and learning process harbours the danger that the knowledge and skills are not benchmarked against a set of quality parameters. These parameters are dened by the students themselves in their personal development plan and the action plan they have to write. It is one of the major tasks of the coaches to safeguard that quality standards are met.

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An e-learning environment is an important supportive tool in this pedagogical approach, since it allows one to monitor a students progress and helps to gain insight in each others process. Students showed great problems and reluctance in working in this environment, again because it required a lot of discipline and ability to reect on ones own progress. An important element in the pedagogical concept was that each student had a personal coach from a business network which was set up with companies in the region.This worked very well from the perspective of the educational institute but we were confronted with the fact that quality criteria has to be designed for these coaches. In The Netherlands, there is now a trend against the background of stimulating entrepreneurship in education to ask entrepreneurs to give lectures and become involved in educational programmes. The idea is that good examples may have a stimulating and motivating effect on students. The aspect of quality is however a real concern because specic skills are required to teach students. One of the main issues in teaching entrepreneurship is the question of the competences students need to acquire. There are those who contend that entrepreneurship cannot be taught, but is mostly inherited. We regard competences as a mixture of skills, attitude and knowledge and focus on the problem-solving abilities of students: how do they deal with a problem they encounter? As to the individual competences, students are tested on personal qualities, intellectual capabilities and working skills before starting the programme in order to assess their aptitude to become an entrepreneur. The test is not used as a selection mechanism, but as an instrument to establish individual strengths and weaknesses. The latter are aspects to take into account and to work on during the 20 weeks. During the introductory period most students indicate they are ill-at-ease with their newly found freedom of self-centred learning activities. They struggle with what they view as lack in direction and as a consequence they have the feeling they lose momentum in developing their dream. Some are insecure about what criteria are set to assess their deliverables. This shows how students are conditioned to work in an instruction-based environment and their struggle to deal with problems they encounter on their road in order to increase their own understanding and gain the necessary knowledge. As a result personal coaching in this period is intensied and assessment is centred around PIMS: Passion, Investment opportunity, Market value and Service orientation. Many students showed a lack in discipline in producing progress and status reports. This has to do with the fact that in a learner-centred approach students are responsible for their own learning trajectory. As a result deadlines for milestones in their project were introduced in a subsequent programme and this worked better since students then had clear goals. The emphasis is on developing a personal vision on entrepreneurship and innovation.The purpose is that students learn to reect on their own role and take their own strengths and weaknesses as a starting point in their learning trajectory.
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From the above theoretical background and the discussion of the practical implementation we can conclude that constructivist student-centred learning implies that students are stimulated to set their own goals, formulate their own targets, collect their own luggage and select their personal mode of transport (or build their own) for their journey towards innovative entrepreneurship. It also implies that students formulate needs and demands in the course of their learning process. However, at the start of that process the student is unaware of his needs, so that personal stimuli from real-life experiences are required. Keywords in this process are ownership, partnership, diversity and ability to learn. These do not only apply to students, they apply to educational institutes in general.The question whether management and faculty embrace entrepreneurship is a prerequisite for a successful programme. Management commitment to whatever is necessary to set up a successful entrepreneurship programme is vital. As long as entrepreneurship is not widely accepted by members of the faculty as being part of academia, it requires a few champions within the institute to embrace the subject. Yet, entrepreneurship is not just the responsibility of economic departments of business schools. Successful implementation of entrepreneurship education should take place cross campus and multidisciplinarily. The Hague University of Professional Education has recognised this and stimulated the Centre of Excellence for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. To this end the Centre developed its Minor programme within the Universitys prole without clashing with departmental curricula. Furthermore, the Centre has started a research programme to obtain further insight into the inuence of individual competences in innovation on the success of the innovation process. This should enable us to eventually improve a professionals preparedness for future innovation processes. In line with the Dutch innovation agenda the Centre aims to stimulate a percentage of the student population of The Hague University of Professional Education towards innovative entrepreneurship that is equal to the national average of people who are entrepreneurs. Currently, this national average hovers around 10%. Innovative entrepreneurship can be a powerful instrument towards business excellence. It should be the hub of activities, bringing together and matching various disciplines in every combination possible. Innovative entrepreneurship is not about solely following the cognitive route; it is about using competences, about experience and practical situations. Although there is a notable lack of reliable data on the effects of entrepreneurial education, there are many indications that entrepreneurship in education is worth investing in. Innovative entrepreneurship comes in many shapes and sizes. In the United States a number of important output indicators are used to measure the success rate of entrepreneurial education: the number of start-ups, contribution to regional development in terms of employment and economic growth, the number of students with entrepreneurial elements in their curriculum, or the number of entrepreneurs in front of a class. Further research into these indicators may prove the assumption on which the Centre of Excellence for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is founded: teaching innovative entrepreneurship pays. At present, research is being carried out in the
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