PDW: Entrepreneurship by design

This PDW aims to stimulate reflection and sharing of ideas and best practices among the participants on how entrepreneurial pedagogy is evolving toward approaches that strongly rely on creativity, ideation, design, and prototyping. Such methods are aimed at helping students transform creative ideas and early-stage business concepts into viable products and services. From a practical point of view, by mixing business and design knowledge, it is expected that designers, inventors, and developers will grow an entrepreneurial mindset to identify business opportunities. In contrast, business students will acquire higher familiarity with technological and practical constraints associated with making a product. From the theoretical point of view, supporters of this pedagogy argue that the interaction between thinking and doing, planning and executing, ideating and prototyping is at the base of more effective pedagogic paradigms that accelerate sense-making, facilitate the discovery of creative solutions, and hedge entrepreneurial risk.

These approaches have become increasingly popular in the last decade, especially in the US educational system, and are receiving growing support and adoption in Europe and globally. Evidence of this trend can be found at the pedagogic level in the injection in entrepreneurship curricula of content related to topics and methodologies such as Design Thinking, Human-Centered Design, User Experience, Ideation, Creativity, and Prototyping. At the infrastructure level, one can witness a consolidated trend of adding makers’ spaces and prototyping labs to entrepreneurship and innovation centers in many universities and Schools. These pedagogic and infrastructural innovations are frequently integrated to support the implementation of project-based learning centered around designing and launching new products and services or hosting innovation events such as Hackathons, Ideas competitions, and Makers’ exhibitions.

In this proposal, I refer to this new pedagogic approach to teaching entrepreneurship with the expression “pedagogy of making.” The PDW has the following objectives:

• Identify the key features and characteristics of a pedagogy of making for entrepreneurial education, combining a review of current initiatives and trends with the participants’ direct experience in their institutions and career
• Share ideas and knowledge on pedagogic tools and approaches to implement a pedagogy of making from the direct experience of the participants
• Identify benefits and criticalities that are expected or experienced following the adoption of a pedagogy of making
• Stimulate a critical assessment of the approach in terms of theoretical foundations, consistency, and alignment/juxtaposition with other pedagogic approaches to entrepreneurial education

The first part of the event (20 min) will consist of a presentation to introduce the phenomenon, existing trends, key terminology, and examples. The second part (40 to 60 min) will consist in a facilitated discussion among the participants to address the above points.

Target audience

• Researchers in entrepreneurship education pedagogy interested to learn, share, or discuss research findings regarding theories and the effectiveness of a pedagogy of making in entrepreneurship education
• Teachers and instructors who have experimented with adopting a pedagogy of making in their classes or programs and are willing to share what they have learned so far with other colleagues
• Evaluators willing to discuss or share ways to approach evaluation learning intervention based on a pedagogy of making

Takeaways

• Increase your understanding of the Making paradigm applied to entrepreneurship education
• Assess critically current practices in terms of underlying theories, expected and actual benefits, existing research, and other participants’ experience
• Share and learn about ways to implement a pedagogy of making in your classes or institutions and impact on students’ learning

Organizer’s bio

Dr. Iandoli is Associate Dean for Global and Online Programs at St. John’s University, College of Professional Studies, and a Professor in the Division of Computer Science, Mathematics, and Science. Dr. Iandoli has served as an Associate Professor at the University of Naples Federico II (Italy) and as Visiting Research Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology. He was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Center for Collective Intelligence of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has published more than 150 papers on the analysis of interfirm collaboration, collective intelligence in online networks, and digital entrepreneurship, serving as a member of the editorial board of several academic journals. Dr. Iandoli’s current research focuses on collective intelligence, interaction design, and product aesthetics and their application in developing innovative products and entrepreneurial opportunities. Dr. Iandoli has served as President of the European Council for Small Business and Entrepreneurship for the 2011-13 term and as President of the International Council for Small Business for the 2016–17 term. He was awarded the Wilford White Fellowship in 2021.

Participation

Participation in the PDW is free, but participants need to be ECSB members or registered for the RENT 2022 Conference in order to join.